Ausculta support

No. Ausculta is an atlas of recorded examples: it plays sounds that are part of the app and does not ask for access to the microphone. It picks up, records and measures nothing.

No. Ausculta is an educational atlas for learning auscultation. It examines no one, measures nothing, does not diagnose and does not replace an examination by a doctor. Always consult a doctor about health concerns.

No, the examples also play through the speaker. Heart, lung and bowel sounds are quiet, though, and contain many low tones that a small speaker plays weakly. In headphones (any will do, wired or Bluetooth) you hear more detail. If you cannot hear an example, turn up the volume; some sounds, such as a third heart sound or fine crackles, are quiet in the original recording too.

The quiz plays an atlas example and you pick the type of sound from up to four names, for example normal heart sounds, a systolic murmur or wheezes. You see right away whether your answer was correct, along with the textbook description, and at the end of the round the number of correct answers. Only your answers are scored. Without Ausculta Pro the quiz uses the free examples, with Pro all of them.

Two atlas examples side by side (A and B), each with its description. Play one, then the other, and notice the difference. It suits sounds that are easy to confuse, such as fine and coarse crackles, or wheezes and rhonchi.

The app remembers on the device which examples you have already played. “Heard X of Y” shows how many examples in a section you have heard, and the “Not yet heard” filter shows only the rest. This stays on your device.

Under Atlas › Practice › Site map there is a drawn chest, front and back, and abdomen. Tap a site (A aortic, P pulmonic, E Erb's point, T tricuspid, M apex; lung apex, side of the chest and lung base, back, trachea; next to the navel) and the examples that, according to the source database, were recorded there open, together with the playback tools. Examples whose source does not state a site are not on the map; the app never guesses a site. The map is a textbook aid for linking a sound with its listening site; it examines no one.

Six short textbook situations built only from atlas examples, for example a fellow student with four heart sites, a child with noisy breathing or the abdomen before and after a meal. A case leads you across the marked sites on the map: at each one you listen to an example and choose the type of sound as in the quiz; at the end you see what you got right. They are not real patients and only your answers are scored. Without Ausculta Pro you walk through the stations with free examples; locked ones are skipped.

Daily practice is spaced repetition over the atlas examples. Each day it prepares at most 20 examples: first the ones due for review, then new ones. An example plays and you choose the type of sound. A correct answer moves the sound to a later review (after 1, 3, 7 and then 14 days), a wrong one sends it back to the start, so it comes back in the very next session. The overview shows your accuracy by type of sound over the last 30 days. Your progress (which examples you named correctly and when they are due for review) is stored only on your phone, nothing is sent; it is deleted when you uninstall the app. More in the technical info.

From the annotations of the source databases. In the 8 heart examples from the CirCor DigiScope database (PhysioNet) the S1 and S2 marks are transferred from its segmentation of the cardiac cycle; in the 8 lung examples from SPRSound and HF_Lung_V1 the coloured stretches of wheezes, crackles, rhonchi, stridor, inhalation and exhalation are transferred from their time annotations. Ausculta detects and computes nothing in the recording; examples from databases that provide no such annotations (for example EPHNOGRAM, KAUH, the HLS-CMDS manikin or the abdomen) have no marks. A missing mark therefore means nothing, only that the source has no annotation for the example.

They are band-passes on the example as it plays: Bell passes 20 to 220 Hz and brings out low sounds (such as the third and fourth heart sounds), Diaphragm 100 to 1200 Hz and brings out higher ones (murmurs, breathing), Wide passes 20 to 2500 Hz, that is almost the whole recording. The names recall the two sides of a stethoscope chest piece, but this is not a model of any particular instrument. The filter can be switched at any time; the recording stays the same. Next to the filters are the speeds 1×, 0.75× and 0.5× (slower playback at the same pitch) and the loop: drag on the waveform to select a stretch that repeats, tap to clear it. The tools are in the Atlas under the section picker, in Compare two and on the site map.

Because none of the source databases provides a recording from this site. Only examples with a site the source explicitly states go on the map, and the app does not guess a site. Erb's point (3rd intercostal space, left sternal border) is marked on the map so that you remember it as a place where both S1 and S2 are heard well; an example will be added if a suitable open recording is found.

Slovak, English, Czech and German. The app follows the language of your iPhone; a different language just for Ausculta can be set in the iPhone Settings under the Ausculta app (Language).

They are short excerpts from open research databases: CirCor DigiScope and EPHNOGRAM (PhysioNet, ODC-By 1.0 licence), KAUH (Mendeley Data, CC BY 4.0), SPRSound (CC BY 4.0), HF_Lung_V1 (CC BY 4.0), HLS-CMDS (recordings from a clinical teaching manikin, CC BY 4.0), JUST Heart Sound Regurgitation (Mendeley Data, CC BY 4.0), SMART-Ped (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0), and bowel sounds from Bowel sounds signal (Mansour, figshare, CC BY 4.0) and Bowel Sounds Audio Files (Rulli et al., figshare, CC BY 4.0); one after-meal example comes from the freesound.org sound library (contact microphone, CC BY 4.0). In the app every example shows its source and licence; the full citations are under About, authorship & references › Atlas: sources and licences. The excerpts were shortened, processed and evened out in loudness for Ausculta. The database authors are not connected with the app and do not endorse it. More in the technical info.

Free: 12 of the 42 atlas sounds, the site map, cases, quiz, daily practice and Compare two with the free examples, the playback tools, all 4 ECG examples with heart sound and the whole guide. Ausculta Pro is a one-time in-app purchase (the App Store shows the price in your local currency), not a subscription. It unlocks the other 30 atlas sounds, which then also appear on the map, in the quiz, in the cases, in daily practice and in Compare two. Pro examples are marked in the atlas; tapping a locked example opens the Pro offer, which is also in Settings.

Open Settings in the app and tap Restore purchases. Pro is restored with no further payment on every device signed in to the same Apple Account. Contributions are not restored because they unlock nothing.

Three voluntary one-time contributions to the development and maintenance of Ausculta. They unlock nothing and are not subscriptions: the app works the same with or without them. Thank you to everyone who contributes.

In the app, in the Guide tab: bell and diaphragm, auscultation sites of the heart and lungs, the four abdominal quadrants and how long to listen. A short version is in the guide on this website.