Date of Award

Fall 2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Program/Concentration

Electrical Engineering

Committee Director

Frederic D. McKenzie

Committee Member

Jiang Li

Committee Member

Dimitrie C. Popescu

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.E55 S97 2009

Abstract

In recent years, a lot of research has focused on improving the clinical skills of medical students and medical practitioners using standardized patients. Standardized patients (SP's) are used by the medical students and physicians in place of mannequins for a more realistic experience. SP's are real people trained to simulate specific illnesses and conditions to a high degree of accuracy which makes it difficult for the medical students to distinguish them from real patients. This research will enhance the capabilities of the standardized patients by providing a non-invasive, natural, harmless and realistic appearing tracking method for placing virtual pathologies using stethoscopes. This method of tracking the stethoscope head involves analyzing and processing the electrical activities of the heart which can be implemented in augmented stethoscopes for auscultation of normal and abnormal cardiac diseases. The electrocardiogram (EKG) signals are processed to obtain heart beat signals called QRS complexes that are then classified to determine the correct position on a SP's torso. This improves the capabilities of the augmented standardized patients in providing a realistic heart auscultation scenario to the medical students. Moreover it is cost effective and appropriately classifies the signal.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/jmvk-5a44

Download

Share

COinS