Deep learning-based cough classification using application-recorded sounds: a transfer learning approach with VGGish

Coughing sounds contain various bio-metric information with regards to respiratory diseases that can help in the assessment of respiratory diseases. While clinicians find coughs insightful, non-experts struggle to identify abnormalities in cough sounds. Furthermore, respiratory diseases has characterized by widespread health complications and elevated mortality rates, the development of early diagnostic systems is imperative for ensuring timely intervention and improving outcomes for both clinicians and patients. Accordingly, we propose a deep learning-based model for early diagnosis. To enhance the reliability of the training data, we utilized annotations provided by multiple medical specialists. Additionally, we examined how clinical expertise and diagnostic input influence the model's generalization performance.

This study introduces a deep learning framework utilizing VGGish as a transfer learning model, enhanced with additional detection and classification networks. The detection model identifies cough events within recorded audio, and then the classification model determines whether a detected cough is normal or abnormal. Both models were trained on raw cough sound data collected via smartphones and labeled by medical experts through a rigorous inspection process.

Experimental evaluations demonstrated that the cough detection model achieved an average accuracy of 0.9883, while the cough classification model attained accuracies of 0.8417, 0.8629, and 0.8662 among dataset1, 2, and 3. To enhance interpretability, we applied Grad-CAM to visualize the features that influenced the model's decision-making. Model performance was further evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) and the area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC).

Our proposed cough classification model has the potential to assist individuals with limited access to healthcare as well as medical professionals with limited experience in diagnosing cough-related conditions. By leveraging deep learning and smartphone-recorded cough sounds, this approach aims to enhance early detection and management of respiratory diseases.