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 through a feeding tube. In either case, it is difficult to determine how much food the infant has taken in. Even more difficult is to know whether a premature baby is hungry in the first place. One way to determine hunger and the amount of food received is to monitor the infant’s bowel sounds.

Another important reason to monitor the bowel sounds of premature infants is to determine whether certain health issues, such as bowel obstructions, are present. Currently, nurses use traditional stethoscopes to listen to the sounds, but electronic monitoring will better their ability to establish proper feeding and detect health problems sooner than is now possible. 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 Biomedical Engineering Department. The medical advisor for the project is Dr. Leonard Eisenfeld, a neonatologist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.   Dr Ron Adrezin 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

Bowel sounds recorded from a premature girl.  This data is preliminary and has not been validated.   Click on this image to hear. More files may be found on our Downloads page.