On Applying Continuous Wavelet Transform in Wheeze Analysis

The identification of continuous abnormal lung sounds, like wheezes, in the total breathing cycle is of great importance in the diagnosis of obstructive airways pathologies. To this vein, the current work introduces an efficient method for the detection of wheezes, based on the time-scale representation of breath sound recordings. The employed Continuous Wavelet Transform is proven to be a valuable tool at this direction, when combined with scale-dependent thresholding. Analysis of lung sound recordings from ‘wheezing’ patients shows promising performance in the detection and extraction of wheezes from the background noise and reveals its potentiality for data-volume reduction in long-term wheezing screening, such as in sleep-laboratories.