Can we diagnose disk and facet degeneration in lumbar spine by acoustic analysis of spine sounds?

Abstract

This study aims to investigate spine sounds from a perspective that would make their use for diagnostic purposes of any spinal pathology possible. People with spine problems can be determined using joint sounds collected from the involved area of the spinal columns of subjects. In our sound dataset, it is observed that a 'click' sound is detected in individuals who are suffering from low back pain. Recorded joint sounds are classified using automatic speech recognition algorithm. mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) are extracted from the sound signals as feature vectors. MFCC's are classified using an artificial neural networks, which is currently the state-of-the-art speech recognition tool. The algorithm has a high success rate of detecting 'click' sounds in a given sound signal and it can perfectly identify and differentiate healthy individuals from unhealthy subjects in our data set. Spine sounds have the potential of serving as a reliable marker of the spine health.