There is an ever-growing demand for measuring respiratory variables during a variety of applications, including monitoring in clinical and occupational settings, and during sporting activities and exercise. Special attention is devoted to the monitoring of respiratory rate because it is a vital sign, which responds to a variety of stressors. There are different methods for measuring respiratory rate, which can be classed as contact-based or contactless. The present paper provides an overview of the currently available contact-based methods for measuring respiratory rate. For these methods, the sensing element (or part of the instrument containing it) is attached to the subject’s body. Methods based upon the recording of respiratory airflow, sounds, air temperature, air humidity, air components, chest wall movements, and modulation of the cardiac activity are presented. Working principles, metrological characteristics, and applications in the respiratory monitoring field are presented to explore potential development and applicability for each method.

Contact-Based Methods for Measuring Respiratory Rate

Objective: This paper describes state of the art, scientific publications and ongoing research related to the methods of analysis of respiratory sounds.

Methods and material: Review of the current medical and technological literature using Pubmed and personal experience.

Results: The study includes a description of the various techniques that are being used to collect auscultation sounds, a physical description of known pathologic sounds for which automatic detection tools were developed. Modern tools are based on artificial intelligence and on technics such as artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems, and genetic algorithms…

Conclusion: The next step will consist in finding new markers so as to increase the efficiency of decision aid algorithms and tools.

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Analysis of Respiratory Sounds: State of the Art

Auscultation of the lung is an important part of the respiratory examination and is helpful in diagnosing various respiratory disorders Auscultation assesses airflow through the trachea-bronchial tree It is important to distinguish normal respiratory sounds from abnormal ones for example crackles, wheezes, and pleural rub in order to make correct diagnosis It is necessary to understand the underlying pathophysiology of various lung sounds generation for better understanding of disease processes Bedside teaching should be strengthened in order to avoid erosion in this age old procedure in the era of technological explosion

Auscultation of the respiratory system

Computerized lung sound analysis as diagnostic aid for the detection of abnormal lung sounds: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective Over the last few decades, there has been significant interest in the automatic analysis of respiratory sounds. However, currently there are no publicly available large databases with which new algorithms can be evaluated and compared. Further developments in the field are dependent on the creation of such databases. Approach This paper describes a public respiratory sound database, which was compiled for an international competition, the first scientific challenge of the IFMBE's International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics. The database includes 920 recordings acquired from 126 participants and two sets of annotations. One set contains 6898 annotated respiratory cycles, some including crackles, wheezes, or a combination of both, and some with no adventitious respiratory sounds. In the other set, precise locations of 10 775 events of crackles and wheezes were annotated. Main results The best system that participated in the challenge achieved an average score of 52.5% with the respiratory cycle annotations and an average score of 91.2% with the event annotations. Significance The creation and public release of this database will be useful to the research community and could bring attention to the respiratory sound classification problem.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6579/ab03ea/pdf

An open access database for the evaluation of respiratory sound classification algorithms.

Computerized lung sound analysis is a multidiscipli-nary ﬁeld. Work in this ﬁeld would be easier if the terms tobe used were clearly deﬁned. This chapter is meant fordoctors, engineers and other persons who are workingwith respiratory sound analysis.The terms collected in this paper of the ComputerizedRespiratory Sound Analysis (CORSA) guidelines includeterms of respiratory diseases, pulmonary physiology,acoustics, automatic data handling and instrumentation.The list includes terms that have not yet been deﬁnedclearly in the literature, or deﬁned in a controversial way.Some terms included have been deﬁned elsewhere, e.g .the terms of lung function variables, but were regardeduseful to be included in this selection in order to improvethe readability. Some general terms have also beenincluded in cases where the common sense meaning ofthat term is different from the speciﬁc meaning in the dis-cipline of respiratory sound research.Each deﬁnition of a term includes, as a rule, a short for-mal deﬁnition, some additional characteristics and refer-ences if available. Ofﬁcial guidelines (European Respir atorySociety Guidelines for Lung Function Studies, AmericanThoracic Society publications) position papers, statementsand reports of international societies as well as originalpapers and review articles in scientiﬁc international jour-nals have been used as references. Handbooks have alsobeen used.The terms deﬁned are listed in alphabetical order, andhave been used systematically in the CORSA guidelines.For the deﬁnition of different kinds of sounds, anattempt has been made to make clear distinctions betweenadjectives indicating locations (like lung, trachea, etc.),

A. Sovijärvi

Papers

Definition of terms for applications of respiratory sounds