Novel Coronavirus Cough Database: NoCoCoDa

The current pandemic associated with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) presents a new area of research with its own set of challenges. Creating unobtrusive remote monitoring tools for medical professionals that may aid in diagnosis, monitoring and contact tracing could lead to more efficient and accurate treatments, especially in this time of physical distancing. Audio based sensing methods can address this by measuring the frequency, severity and characteristics of the COVID-19 cough. However, the feasibility of accumulating coughs directly from patients is low in the short term. This article introduces a novel database (NoCoCoDa), which contains COVID-19 cough events obtained through public media intervi

Design of a System to Measure Spatial Sound Localization Abilities

Hearing ability declines with age. Specifically, it has been shown that sound localization ability becomes increasingly unreliable. This paper describes the design of a system that simulates spatial sound sources to be presented to the user via headphones. Simulation of spatial sound sources are calculated using four increasingly complex methods; (1) Phase adjustment simulation, (2) Amplitude adjustment simulation, (3) Amplitude + Phase adjustment simulation, and (4) Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF) adjustment

Comparison of Silence Removal Methods for the Identification of Audio Cough Events

Sensing technologies are embedded in our everyday lives. Smart homes typically use an Audio Virtual Assistant (AVA) (e.g. Alexa, Siri, and Google Home) interface that collects sensor information, which can provide security, assist in everyday activities and monitor health related information. One such measure is cough, changes of which can be a marker of worsening conditions for many respiratory diseases. Creating a reliable monitoring system utilizing technology that may already be present

Characterization of measurements from pressure sensitive mats using an anthropomorphic body model

Pressure sensitive mats provide an opportunity for non-intrusive continuous monitoring of patient health and physiology. Pressure sensitive mats have been used to analyze balance, bed transfers, pressure ulcers and sleep. This paper describes a model that can be used to measure the characteristics of pressure sensitive mats. The main contribution of this paper is the design and fabrication of a 2D and 3D model of an older adult female (70 yrs, 1.59m and 71.6kg). The design was based on anthropomorphic data from literature. The final anthropomorphic model was validated using a human subject. The model can be used to simulate various health conditions, such as frailty in older adults. The paper demonstrates that the mat can detect slight mass variations at the ankle typical of fluid retention experienced by patients suffering from congestive heart failure. These findings have implications in early detection and intervention of these and other conditions involving changes in mass

Comparing metrological properties of pressure-sensitive mats for continuous patient monitoring

Pressure-sensitive mat (PSM) technology offers several advantages as a sensor modality for patient monitoring since it is non-contact and unobtrusive. However, as we move to deploy PSM for long-term continuous patient monitoring, we must consider and characterize their metrological properties that arise due to their electrical, mechanical or optical construction. We evaluate the dynamic metrological properties of rise time, creep, percent change in creep, drift, and repeatability for three different PSM technologies from three vendors, namely, S4 (Kinotex fiber-optics), Tekscan (resistive ink), and XSensor (capacitive). Both long-term (14.5 hrs) and repeated short-term experiments (1 min) were conducted using two anthropometric models exhibiting contact pressures representative of adult and neonatal patients. Long-term experiments were conducted to characterize rise time, creep, percent change in creep, and drift for each sensor. With both pressure models, the XSensor exhibited the fastest dynamic response in terms of rise and recovery times, while Tekscan exhibited the slowest responses. S4 and Tekscan present with an expected decrease in drift with application of the adult model, but XSensor sh

Smart monitoring of fluid intake and bladder voiding using pressure sensitive mats

Pressure sensitive mats have been used in noninvasive smart monitoring for a variety of problems including breathing rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, mobility, and weight. This paper describes a proof of concept application of pressure mats to monitor fluid intake/output (fluid cycle) events during the night. The ability to more accurately track such events has potential implications for monitoring those individuals who have nocturia, a condition where a person wakes at night to urinate. Data were collected from a healthy young female subject instructed to drink as much water as was comfortable (700mL) and lie in a supine position on a mattress located directly on three pressure mats. This was compared to an initial data set collected immediately after voiding but before drinking, 30 minutes after drinking, 60 minutes after drinking and a final data set after again voiding the bladder. The additional pressure from the 700mL of water was detectible and tracked over the course of the hour-long testing session under idealized conditions. This provides a proof-of-concept that nocturnal fluid intake and bladder voiding event