A novel infrasound and audible machine-learning approach to the diagnosis of COVID-19.
ERJ Open Res
; 8(4)2022 Oct.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36284830
ABSTRACT
Background:
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has rapidly spread around the world, causing a global public health and economic crisis. A critical limitation in detecting COVID-19-related pneumonia is that it is often manifested as a "silent pneumonia", i.e. pulmonary auscultation that sounds "normal" using a standard stethoscope. Chest computed tomography is the gold standard for detecting COVID-19 pneumonia; however, radiation exposure, availability and cost preclude its utilisation as a screening tool for COVID-19 pneumonia. In this study we hypothesised that COVID-19 pneumonia, "silent" to the human ear using a standard stethoscope, is detectable using a full-spectrum auscultation device that contains a machine-learning analysis.Methods:
Lung sound signals were acquired, using a novel full-spectrum (3-2000â Hz) stethoscope, from 164 COVID-19 pneumonia patients, 61 non-COVID-19 pneumonia patients and 141 healthy subjects. A machine-learning classifier was constructed and the data were classified into three groups 1) normal lung sounds, 2) COVID-19 pneumonia and 3) non-COVID-19 pneumonia.Results:
Standard auscultation found that 72% of the non-COVID-19 pneumonia patients had abnormal lung sounds compared with only 25% of the COVID-19 pneumonia patients. The classifier's sensitivity and specificity for the detection of COVID-19 pneumonia were 97% and 93%, respectively, when analysing the sound and infrasound data, and they were reduced to 93% and 80%, respectively, without the infrasound data (p<0.01 difference in receiver operating characteristic curves with and without infrasound).Conclusions:
This study reveals that useful clinical information exists in the infrasound spectrum of COVID-19-related pneumonia and machine-learning analysis applied to the full spectrum of lung sounds is useful in its detection.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Diagnostic_studies
Language:
En
Journal:
ERJ Open Res
Year:
2022
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Israel
Publication country:
ENGLAND
/
ESCOCIA
/
GB
/
GREAT BRITAIN
/
INGLATERRA
/
REINO UNIDO
/
SCOTLAND
/
UK
/
UNITED KINGDOM