Since stethoscopes are designed for individual listening it is not possible to share the sounds with other colleagues for discussion. However, the identification and interpretation of the sounds remains a subjective task. Health professionals use it to guide clinical decisions and treatment strategies 1. Similar content being viewed by othersĬhest auscultation is a widely used method in the diagnosis and follow up of several diseases. We observed a higher improvement in the classification of crackles compared to wheezes. Thus, we conclude that the use of spectrograms had a positive impact on the inter-rater agreement and the agreement with experts. For crackles, these values were k = 0.22 and k = 0.40 (p = <0.01) in the same order. In a group analysis we observed that Fleiss kappa values were k = 0.51 and k = 0.56 (p = 0.63) for classifying wheezes without and with spectrograms. When classifying crackles 16 out of 23 showed improvement when spectrograms were used. In an individual analysis comparing each student to an expert annotated reference standard we found that 13 out of 23 students had a positive change in kappa when classifying wheezes with the help of spectrograms. We also calculated Fleiss kappa for the 23 observers with and without the spectrogram. We calculated kappa values for the agreement between each student and the expert classification with and without display of spectrograms and tested for significant improvement between these two coefficients. First sound only, then sound with spectrograms. The students classified the recordings in a random order twice. The sample contained 15 normal recordings and 15 with wheezes or crackles. To do this, we asked twenty-three medical students at UiT the Arctic University of Norway to classify 30 lung sounds recordings for the presence of wheezes and crackles. In this study, we tested if the use of spectrograms improves the agreement when classifying wheezes and crackles. New technological developments like the use of visSual representation of sounds through spectrograms could improve the agreement when classifying lung sounds, but this is not yet known. However, the interpretation of lung sounds is a subjective task and disagreements arise. Chest auscultation is a widely used method in the diagnosis of lung diseases.
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