An Automated System for 24-h Monitoring of Cough Frequency: The Leicester Cough Monitor

The objective monitoring of cough for extended periods of time has long been recognized as an important step towards a better understanding of this symptom, and a better management of chronic cough patients. In this paper, we present a system for the automatic analysis of 24-h, continuous, ambulatory recordings of cough. The system uses audio recordings from a miniature microphone and the detection algorithm is based on statistical models of the time-spectral characteristics of cough sounds. We validated the system against manual counts obtained by a trained observer on 40 ambulatory recordings and our results show a median sensitivity value of 85.7%, median positive predictive value of 94.7% and median false positive rate of 0.8 events/h. An analysis application was developed, with a graphical user interface, allowing the use of the system in clinical settings by technical or medical staff. The result of the analysis of a recording session is presented as a concise, graphical-based report. The modular nature of the system interface facilitates its enhancement with the integration of further modules.

[1]  Richard Rose,et al.  A hidden Markov model based keyword recognition system , 1990, International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[2]  R. Loudon,et al.  Cough frequency in patients with respiratory disease. , 1967, The American review of respiratory disease.

[3]  A. Chang,et al.  Causes, Assessment and Measurement of Cough in Children , 2008 .

[4]  D. B. Keenan,et al.  Evaluation of an ambulatory system for the quantification of cough frequency in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease , 2005, Cough.

[5]  D. Altman,et al.  STATISTICAL METHODS FOR ASSESSING AGREEMENT BETWEEN TWO METHODS OF CLINICAL MEASUREMENT , 1986, The Lancet.

[6]  Robert G. Loudon,et al.  Cough Frequency in Patients with Respiratory Disease1, 2 , 1967 .

[7]  K. Fletcher,et al.  Quality of life in coughers. , 2002, Pulmonary pharmacology & therapeutics.

[8]  A M Diehl,et al.  Tape recorder for evaluation of coughs in children. , 1966, American journal of diseases of children.

[9]  Biing-Hwang Juang,et al.  Fundamentals of speech recognition , 1993, Prentice Hall signal processing series.

[10]  S. Subburaj,et al.  Methods of recording and analysing cough sounds. , 1996, Pulmonary pharmacology.

[11]  R. Irwin,et al.  Chronic cough. The spectrum and frequency of causes, key components of the diagnostic evaluation, and outcome of specific therapy. , 1990, The American review of respiratory disease.

[12]  K. Chung.  Methods of assessing cough and antitussives in man. , 1996, Pulmonary pharmacology.

[13]  Heribert Popp,et al.  An introduction to MPEG Layer-3 , 2000 .

[14]  R. Irwin,et al.  Impact of chronic cough on quality of life. , 1998, Archives of internal medicine.

[15]  I. Pavord,et al.  Cough frequency, cough sensitivity and health status in patients with chronic cough. , 2006, Respiratory medicine.

[16]  C R WOOLF,et al.  Objective Assessment of Cough Suppressants under Clinical Conditions Using a Tape Recorder System , 1964, Thorax.

[17]  A Bush,et al.  A new device for ambulatory cough recording , 1994, Pediatric pulmonology.

[18]  Kian Fan Chung.  The Clinical and Pathophysiological Challenge of Cough , 2008 .

[19]  P D Phelan,et al.  A new use for an old Holter monitor: an ambulatory cough meter. , 1997, The European respiratory journal.

[20]  David H. Evans,et al.  Detection of cough signals in continuous audio recordings using hidden Markov models , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[21]  Kian Fan Chung.  Measurement and Assessment of Cough , 2008 .

[22]  Barry M. G. Cheetham,et al.  DSP algorithm for cough identification and counting , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.