Feature extraction using time-frequency/scale analysis and ensemble of feature sets for crackle detection

Pulmonary crackles are used as indicators for the diagnosis of different pulmonary disorders. Crackles are very common adventitious sounds which have transient characteristic. From the characteristics of crackles such as timing and number of occurrences, the type and the severity of the pulmonary diseases can be obtained. In this study, a novel method is proposed for crackle detection. In this method, various feature sets are extracted using time-frequency and time-scale analysis. The extracted feature sets are fed into support vector machines both individually and as an ensemble of networks. Besides, as a preprocessing stage in order to improve the success of the model, frequency bands containing no-information are removed using dual tree complex wavelet transform, which is a shift invariant transform with limited redundancy and an improved version of discrete wavelet transform. The comparative results of individual feature sets and ensemble of sets with pre-processed and non pre-processed data are proposed.