Acoustic source localization with microphone arrays for remote noise monitoring in an Intensive Care Unit

An approach is described to apply spatial filtering with microphone arrays to localize acoustic sources in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). This is done to obtain more detailed information about disturbing noise sources in the ICU with the ultimate goal of facilitating the reduction of the overall background noise level, which could potentially improve the patients’ experience and reduce the time needed for recovery. This paper gives a practical description of the system, including the audio hardware setup as well as the design choices for the microphone arrays. Additionally, the necessary signal processing steps required to produce meaningful data are explained, focusing on a novel clustering approach that enables an automatic evaluation of the spatial filtering results. This approach allows the data to be presented to the nursing staff in a way that enables them to act on the results produced by the system.

[1]  J. D. Young,et al.  An investigation of sound levels on intensive care units with reference to the WHO guidelines , 2013, Critical Care.

[2]  Kerstin Persson Waye,et al.  Characterizing noise and perceived work environment in a neurological intensive care unit. , 2008, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[3]  Michael Vorländer,et al.  Influence of various uncertainty factors on the result of beamforming measurements , 2011 .

[4]  Harry L. Van Trees,et al.  Optimum Array Processing: Part IV of Detection, Estimation, and Modulation Theory , 2002 .

[5]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Simultaneous localization of multiple sound sources using blind adaptive MIMO filtering , 2005, Proceedings. (ICASSP '05). IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2005..

[6]  D. Needham,et al.  Sleep Deprivation in Critical Illness , 2012, Journal of intensive care medicine.

[7]  S. P. Lloyd,et al.  Least squares quantization in PCM , 1982, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[8]  Barbara Oakley,et al.  Reducing hospital noise: a review of medical device alarm management. , 2012, Biomedical instrumentation & technology.

[9]  E. Litton,et al.  The Efficacy of Earplugs as a Sleep Hygiene Strategy for Reducing Delirium in the ICU: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis* , 2016, Critical care medicine.

[10]  C. Weigle,et al.  Cost analysis of ceiling tile replacement for noise abatement. , 1996, Journal of perinatology : official journal of the California Perinatal Association.

[11]  A. Richardson,et al.  Earplugs and eye masks: do they improve critical care patients' sleep? , 2007, Nursing in critical care.

[12]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[13]  P. Rousseeuw.  Silhouettes: a graphical aid to the interpretation and validation of cluster analysis , 1987 .

[14]  M. Carskadon,et al.  Environmental noise as a cause of sleep disruption in an intermediate respiratory care unit. , 1996, Sleep.

[15]  Jose A. Ballesteros,et al.  Noise source identification with Beamforming in the pass-by of a car , 2015 .

[16]  J. Högbom,et al.  APERTURE SYNTHESIS WITH A NON-REGULAR DISTRIBUTION OF INTERFEROMETER BASELINES. Commentary , 1974 .

[17]  Sergei Vassilvitskii,et al.  k-means++: the advantages of careful seeding , 2007, SODA '07.

[18]  W. Spotnitz,et al.  Interventions to reduce decibel levels on patient care units. , 1998, The American surgeon.

[19]  S. McKinley,et al.  A pilot study of sound levels in an Australian adult general intensive care unit. , 2010, Noise & health.

[20]  C. Jeong,et al.  Noise and Room Acoustic Conditions in a Tertiary Referral Hospital, Seoul National University Hospital , 2019, Journal of audiology & otology.

[21]  Don H. Johnson,et al.  Array Signal Processing: Concepts and Techniques , 1993 .

[22]  Pieter Sijtsma,et al.  Using Phased Array Beamforming to Identify Broadband Noise Sources in a Turbofan Engine , 2010 .

[23]  G. Mills,et al.  Do earplugs stop noise from driving critical care patients into delirium? , 2012, Critical Care.

[24]  Thomas F. Brooks,et al.  A Deconvolution Approach for the Mapping of Acoustic Sources (DAMAS) Determined from Phased Microphone Arrays , 2004 .

[25]  Hargest Ts.  Clinical engineering practices: noise--the new hospital contaminate. , 1979 .

[26]  Sandro Guidati.  ADVANCED BEAMFORMING TECHNIQUES IN VEHICLE ACOUSTICS , 2010 .

[27]  Jont B. Allen,et al.  Image method for efficiently simulating small‐room acoustics , 1976 .

[28]  T. Hargest.  Clinical engineering practices: noise--the new hospital contaminate. , 1979, Clinical engineering.

[29]  Jason T. Kunio,et al.  Correlating Noise Sources Identified by Beamforming with Sound Power Measurements , 2005 .

[30]  Ennes Sarradj,et al.  Three-Dimensional Acoustic Source Mapping with Different Beamforming Steering Vector Formulations , 2012 .

[31]  Maurizio Omologo,et al.  Acoustic source location in noisy and reverberant environment using CSP analysis , 1996, 1996 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing Conference Proceedings.

[32]  A. Pack,et al.  Abnormal sleep/wake cycles and the effect of environmental noise on sleep disruption in the intensive care unit. , 2001, American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine.

[33]  J. D. Young,et al.  Mapping sources of noise in an intensive care unit , 2019, Anaesthesia.

[34]  Bhaskar D. Rao,et al.  Sparse signal reconstruction from limited data using FOCUSS: a re-weighted minimum norm algorithm , 1997, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[35]  Aiaa Paper,et al.  CLEAN based on spatial source coherence , 2007 .

[36]  Tsuyoshi Murata,et al.  {m , 1934, ACML.