Analyzing the audio signals of degenerative arthritis with an electronic stethoscope.

The advance of modern medical technology has extended people's life and increased the average age of the society. Some chronic diseases are due to the aging of the population and knee joint aging is a common disease in the elderly. Common joint pathology contains degenerative arthritis, arthroncus of knees, and gouty arthritis. Knee joints are the largest and the most complicated joints in a human body as well as the joint bearing huge pressure. Wrong posture, overuse, or vigorous exercise often cause injuries to knee joints, and such injuries could easily result in joint pathology and patients falling and breaking bones due to pain and powerlessness. An acoustic wave technology, aiming at knee joints, is designed to examine a patient's current condition of joints. An electronic stethoscope or high-resolution recording equipment is utilized for collecting necessary signals, through which the wide-frequency audio signals of knee joints could be measured for the analyses and statistics in a back-end computer. Besides, it could classify the groups with healthy and degenerative knee joints to assist physicians in proceeding non-invasive joint degeneration examination clinically and doing the most suitable rehabilitation therapy.