Can Machine Learning Be Used to Recognize and Diagnose Coughs?

Emerging wireless technologies, such as 5G and beyond, are bringing new use cases to the forefront, one of the most prominent being machine learning empowered health care. One of the notable modern medical concerns that impose an immense worldwide health burden are respiratory infections. Since cough is an essential symptom of many respiratory infections, an automated system to screen for respiratory diseases based on raw cough data would have a multitude of beneficial research and medical applications. In literature, machine learning has already been successfully used to detect cough events in controlled environments. In this paper, we present a low complexity, automated recognition and diagnostic tool for screening respiratory infections that utilizes Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to detect cough within environment audio and diagnose three potential illnesses (i.e., bronchitis, bronchiolitis and pertussis) based on their unique cough audio features. Both proposed detection and diagnosis models achieve an accuracy of over 89%, while also remaining computationally efficient. Results show that the proposed system is successfully able to detect and separate cough events from background noise. Moreover, the proposed single diagnosis model is capable of distinguishing between different illnesses without the need of separate models.Comment: Accepted in IEEE International Conference on E-Health and Bioengineering - EHB 202

Incremental multiclass open-set audio recognition

Incremental learning aims to learn new classes if they emerge while maintaining the performance for previously known classes. It acquires useful information from incoming data to update the existing models. Open-set recognition, however, requires the ability to recognize examples from known classes and reject examples from new/unknown classes. There are two main challenges in this matter. First, new class discovery: the algorithm needs to not only recognize known classes but it must also detect unknown classes. Second, model extension: after the new classes are identified, the model needs to be updated. Focusing on this matter, we introduce incremental open-set multiclass support vector machine algorithms that can classify examples from seen/unseen classes, using incremental learning to increase the current model with new classes without entirely retraining the system. Comprehensive evaluations are carried out on both open set recognition and incremental learning. For open-set recognition, we adopt the openness test that examines the effectiveness of a varying number of known/unknown labels. For incremental learning, we adapt the model to detect a single novel class in each incremental phase and update the model with unknown classes. Experimental results show promising performance for the proposed methods, compared with some representative previous methods

PRACTICAL COUGH DETECTION IN PRESENCE OF BACKGROUND NOISE AND PRELIMINARY DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS FROM COUGH SOUND USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Cough is one of the most common symptoms for many of the diseases. Physicians have been using characteristics of cough for preliminary diagnosis of certain respiratory diseases for ages. But the methods have been subjective and often depend on self-reported history and description of cough by the patients. Recently, with advent of the omnipresent recording devices and advances in machine learning capabilities, many studies have attempted to partially fill the gap. These studies have approached the problem objectively to create devices like cough monitors, cough counters, and partial automatic cough detection using machine learning. There is still a huge gap that exists in detecting and diagnosing the cough in a practical way. This study is an attempt to contribute towards filling this gap. We propose and analyze a machine learning based method to automatically detect cough in presence of background noise. After successful cough detection, we investigate the possibility of preliminary differential diagnosis by distinguishing the cough associated with Asthma, Bronchitis, Bronchiolitis, Pertussis patients and healthy people. As more training data could be collected for cough and non-cough sounds, it allowed us to leverage the potential of powerful deep architecture like ResNet for the cough detection part. For the diagnosis part of the work, not much data was available. In this case the preliminary results show that XGBoost performed better than CNN and ResNet architectures. While the cough detection part of the study offers mature results, lot more cough sound data for the examined diseases is needed before generalizable conclusions can be drawn from the diagnosis results observed in this study

FluNet: An AI-Enabled Influenza-like Warning System

Influenza is an acute viral respiratory disease that is currently causing severe financial and resource strains worldwide. With the COVID-19 pandemic exceeding 153 million cases worldwide, there is a need for a low-cost and contactless surveillance system to detect symptomatic individuals. The objective of this study was to develop FluNet, a novel, proof-of-concept, low-cost and contactless device for the detection of high-risk individuals. The system conducts face detection in the LWIR with a precision rating of 0.98, a recall of 0.91, an F-score of 0.96, and a mean intersection over union of 0.74 while sequentially taking the temperature trend of faces with a thermal accuracy of ± 1 K. While in parallel determining if someone is coughing by using a custom lightweight deep convolutional neural network with a precision rating of 0.95, a recall of 0.92, an F score of 0.94 and an AUC of 0.98. We concluded this study by testing the accuracy of the direction of arrival estimation for the cough detection revealing an error of ± 4.78°. If a subject is symptomatic, a photo is taken with a specified region of interest using a visible light camera. Two datasets have been constructed, one for face detection in the LWIR consisting of 250 images of 20 participants’ faces at various rotations and coverings, including face masks. The other for the real-time detection of coughs comprised of 40,482 cough / not cough sounds. These findings could be helpful for future low-cost edge computing applications for influenza-like monitoring

Visualization and categorization of ecological acoustic events based on discriminant features

Although sound classification in soundscape studies are generally performed by experts, the large growth of acoustic data presents a major challenge for performing such task. At the same time, the identification of more discriminating features becomes crucial when analyzing soundscapes, and this occurs because natural and anthropogenic sounds are very complex, particularly in Neotropical regions, where the biodiversity level is very high. In this scenario, the need for research addressing the discriminatory capability of acoustic features is of utmost importance to work towards automating these processes. In this study we present a method to identify the most discriminant features for categorizing sound events in soundscapes. Such identification is key to classification of sound events. Our experimental findings validate our method, showing high discriminatory capability of certain extracted features from sound data, reaching an accuracy of 89.91% for classification of frogs, birds and insects simultaneously. An extension of these experiments to simulate binary classification reached accuracy of 82.64%,100.0% and 99.40% for the classification between combinations of frogs-birds, frogs-insects and birds-insects, respectively

Cough Monitoring Through Audio Analysis

The detection of cough events in audio recordings requires the analysis of a significant amount of data as cough is typically monitored continuously over several hours to capture naturally occurring cough events. The recorded data is mostly composed of undesired sound events such as silence, background noise, and speech. To reduce computational costs and to address the ethical concerns raised from the collection of audio data in public environments, the data requires pre-processing prior to any further analysis. Current cough detection algorithms typically use pre-processing methods to remove undesired audio segments from the collected data but do not preserve the privacy of individuals being recorded while monitoring respiratory events. This study reveals the need for an automatic pre-processing method that removes sensitive data from the recording prior to any further analysis to ensure privacy preservation of individuals. Specific characteristics of cough sounds can be used to discard sensitive data from audio recordings at a pre-processing stage, improving privacy preservation, and decreasing ethical concerns when dealing with cough monitoring through audio analysis. We propose a pre-processing algorithm that increases privacy preservation and significantly decreases the amount of data to be analysed, by separating cough segments from other non-cough segments, including speech, in audio recordings. Our method verifies the presence of signal energy in both lower and higher frequency regions and discards segments whose energy concentrates only on one of them. The method is iteratively applied on the same data to increase the percentage of data reduction and privacy preservation. We evaluated the performance of our algorithm using several hours of audio recordings with manually pre-annotated cough and speech events. Our results showed that 5 iterations of the proposed method can discard up to 88.94% of the speech content present in the recordings, allowing for a strong privacy preservation while considerably reducing the amount of data to be further analysed by 91.79%. The data reduction and privacy preservation achievements of the proposed pre-processing algorithm offers the possibility to use larger datasets captured in public environments and would beneficiate all cough detection algorithms by preserving the privacy of subjects and by-stander conversations recorded during cough monitoring

Exploring the optimal potential of transient reflection method through mel-frequency ceptrums coefficient and artificial neural network for leak detection and size estimation in water distribution systems

Water pipeline systems are critical infrastructures that provide potable water to communities. The design and operation of these systems are complex and require careful consideration of various factors, such as system reliability. Regular maintenance and inspection of pipelines and other components are necessary to prevent leaks and ensure that the system operates effectively. The efficient detection and accurate estimation of leaks in water distribution systems are crucial for maintaining the integrity and functionality of the infrastructure. This research aims to unleash the full potential of the transient reflection method through the integration of Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) techniques for leak detection and size estimation in water distribution systems. By leveraging the combined power of signal processing and machine learning, this study aim to advance the state-of-the-art methodologies for leak detection and size estimation, providing more accurate and efficient approaches based on transient reflection method. The objectives of this research are to explores the application of MFCC as a signal processing technique to extract vital information from the transient reflection signals. The transient reflection signals carry valuable insights into the characteristics of the water distribution system and can aid in identifying leaks. Furthermore to investigate and select significant features derived from the transient reflection signals that reflect the nature of leak size. Finally, is to develop and validate an ANN-based model for leak size estimation that harnesses the power of the extracted TRM features. To achieve these objectives, extensive experimentation and analysis will be conducted using transient reflection method obtained from laboratory scale water distribution systems. The data will be collected from various sizes of leaks. The collected dataset will serve as the foundation for training and validating the developed ANN model. Performance evaluation metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and mean squared error, will be utilized to assess the effectiveness and reliability of the leak detection and size estimation technique. The expected outcomes of this research include advancements in leak detection and size estimation techniques in water distribution systems. The integration of MFCC and ANN techniques has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of leak detection, leading to timely identification and mitigation of leaks. The developed estimation model can aid in assessing the severity of leaks, enabling more effective allocation of resources for repair and maintenance activities. Ultimately, the findings of this research will contribute to the enhancement of water distribution system management, promoting water conservation and minimizing the adverse impacts of leaks on infrastructure and the environment. In conclusion, this research endeavors to unleash the full potential of the transient reflection method through the integration of MFCC and ANN techniques for leak detection and size estimation in water distribution systems. By leveraging signal processing and machine learning, this study aims to advance the state-of-the-art methodologies and provide more accurate and efficient approaches to address the challenges associated with leak detection and size estimation. The outcomes of this research have the potential to significantly benefit water management authorities, utilities, and researchers working in the field of water distribution system management and conservation