Theory and Application of Audio-Based Assessment of Cough

Cough is a common symptom of many respiratory diseases. Many medical literatures underline that a system for the automatic, objective, and reliable detection of cough events is important and very promising to detect pathology severity in chronic cough disease. In order to track the development status of an audio-based cough monitoring system, we briefly described the history of objective cough detection and then illustrated the cough sound generating principle. The probable endpoints of cough clinical studies, including cough frequency, intensity of coughing, and acoustic properties of cough sound, were analyzed in this paper. Finally, we introduce some successful cough monitoring equipment and their recognition algorithm in detail. It can be obtained that, firstly, acoustic variability of cough sounds within and between individuals makes it difficult to assess the intensity of coughing. Furthermore, now great progress in audio-based cough detection is being made. Moreover, accurate portable objective monitoring systems will be available and widely used in home care and clinical trials in the near future.