Automated Heart and Lung Auscultation in Robotic Physical Examinations

Abstract: This paper presents the first implementation of autonomous robotic auscultation of heart and lung sounds. To select auscultation locations that generate high-quality sounds, a Bayesian Optimization (BO) formulation leverages visual anatomical cues to predict where high-quality sounds might be located, while using auditory feedback to adapt to patient-specific anatomical qualities. Sound quality is estimated online using machine learning models trained on a database of heart and lung stethoscope recordings. Experiments on 4 human subjects show that our system autonomously captures heart and lung sounds of similar quality compared to tele-operation by a human trained in clinical auscultation. Surprisingly, one of the subjects exhibited a previously unknown cardiac pathology that was first identified using our robot, which demonstrates the potential utility of autonomous robotic auscultation for health screening.