Detection of explosive lung and bowel sounds by means of fractal dimension

An efficient technique for detecting explosive lung sounds (LS) (fine/coarse crackles and squawks) or bowel sounds (BS) in clinical auscultative recordings is presented. The technique is based on a fractal-dimension (FD) analysis of the recorded LS and BS obtained from controls and patients with pulmonary and bowel pathology, respectively. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, since it clearly detects the time location and duration of LS and BS, despite their variation either in time duration and/or amplitude. A noise stress test justifies the noise robustness of the FD-based detector, indicating its potential use in everyday clinical practice.