Monitoring of wheeze duration during spontaneous respiration in asthmatic patients

Respiratory sound analysis can offer important information related to pulmonary diseases. Wheezes have been reported as adventitious respiratory sounds in asthmatic or obstructive patients, during forced exhalation maneuvers. In this work, we propose a method for monitoring and analysis of respiratory sounds in frequency domain, during spontaneous ventilation. The database analyzed was acquired during spontaneous ventilation for 120 seconds (DBsv), of 26 asthmatics patients. Using an autoregressive model (AR, order 16), the Power Spectral Density (PSD) was calculated for every phase of expiration and inspiration and the maximum frequency (fp) was estimated. From this parameter we study the time duration of the wheezes. The effect of bronchodilator inhalation in asthmatic patients was studied analyzing the duration of the wheezes in the bandwidth 600-2000 Hz (HFband). The wheeze duration is evaluated as the number of consecutive segments, with fp is inside of HFband, (for 3 or more segments in a cycle). The difference of the wheeze duration inside the respiratory cycles (Dwheez), before and after bronchodilator inhalation (POST) was evaluated. It was found a good correlation between Dwheez and FEV 1% improvement (FEV 1%_imp), for FEV1%_imp greater than 8%, whereas values FEV1%_imp less than 8% did not show any change of Dwheez. This last result suggests no difference in the wheeze duration between the baseline and POST records. This method could predict the FEV1%_imp by means of estimation of Dwheez during spontaneous ventilation.