Detection and Analysis of Bowel Sounds in Neonates

Video of Dr. Eisenfeld examining a baby in the CCMC NICU using the Thinklabs stethoscope connected to a personal computer.

 

Though some premature babies can be breast-fed, many more receive nourishment via a feeding tube. In either case, it is difficult to determine how much food the infant has consumed. It is even more difficult to know whether a premature infant is hungry in the first place. One method to determine hunger and the amount of food received is to monitor the infant’s bowel sounds.

Monitoring the bowel sounds of premature infants can also play a major role in determining whether certain health issues, such as bowel obstructions, are present.   Up until now, the medical community has utilized "traditional" stethoscopes to listen to the bowel sounds of premature infants.  This method is very difficult, time consuming and can be very invasive to these fragile undersized infants. 

What would prove to be beneficial to the medical community would be a more hypersensitive electronic monitoring devise.  A precision-guided instrument will greatly enhance the ability to establish proper feeding methods/procedures and detect health issues sooner. Our students are working with an electronic stethoscope to detect and analyze bowel sounds in premature infants to determine procedures and protocols for its regular use.

The electronic stethoscope has been provided for this project by Clive Smith, founder of Thinklabs. Student editions of LabVIEW have been provided by National Instruments. Clinical support is provided by Raymond Renouf, MSBME, Project Manager/Clinical Engineer, Hartford Hospital's Biomedical Engineering Department. The medical advisor for the project is Dr. Leonard Eisenfeld, a neonatologist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.   Dr. Ron Adrezin, United States Coast Guard Academy and Dr. Jonathan Hill, University of Hartford, are the technical advisors.

Student participants and affiliations:

• Stephen Charry, University of Hartford
• Christopher Diyaolu, University of Hartford
• Arjun Karivardhan, University of Hartford
• Andrew Maloney , University of Hartford
• Amanda Rao, Trinity College
• Johana Redden, Manchester Community College
• M. Shalane Regan, University of Hartford
• Kelly Stephens, University of Hartford

Click on the image above to listen to a sample of bowel sounds.  This data is preliminary and has not been validated.  More files may be found on our Downloads page.