Bronchial breath sounds are slightly louder, harsher, and higher pitched they normally can be heard over the trachea and over areas of lung consolidation, such as occur with pneumonia Overview of Pneumonia Pneumonia is acute inflammation of the lungs caused by infection. An acoustic source localization algorithm coupled to the BE model estimated the wheeze source location to within a few millimeters based solely on the acoustic field at the surface. Vesicular breath sounds are the normal sounds heard over most lung fields. Several cases were simulated, including a bronchoconstricted lung that had an internal acoustic source introduced in a bronchiole, approximating a wheeze. The chest wall is modeled as a boundary condition on the parenchymal surface. On the other hand, the crackles are discontinuous adventitious lung sounds in frequency range from 100 to more than 2000 Hz and with the duration less than 20. Within the BE model of the left lung parenchyma, comprised of more than 6000 triangular surface elements, more than 30 000 monopoles are used to approximate complex airway-originated acoustic sources. This work is extended using an efficient numerical boundary element (BE) approach to calculate the resulting radiated sound field from the airway tree into the lung parenchyma taking into account the surrounding chest wall. In a recent publication by Henry and Royston, an algorithm was introduced to calculate the acoustic response to externally introduced and endogenous respiratory sounds within a realistic, patient-specific subglottal airway tree.

Adventitious lung sounds