A noval pulmonary function evaluation method based on ResNet50 + SVR model and cough

Abstract

Traditionally, the clinical evaluation of respiratory diseases was pulmonary function testing, which can be used for the detection of severity and prognosis through pulmonary function parameters. However, this method is limited by the complex process, which is impossible for patients to monitor daily. In order to evaluate pulmonary function parameters conveniently with less time and location restrictions, cough sound is the substitute parameter. In this paper, 371 cough sounds segments from 150 individuals were separated into 309 and 62 as the training and test samples. Short-time Fourier transform (STFT) was applied to transform cough sound into spectrogram, and ResNet50 model was used to extract 2048-dimensional features. Through support vector regression (SVR) model with biological attributes, the data were regressed with pulmonary function parameters, FEV1, FEV1%, FEV1/FVC, FVC, FVC%, and the performance of this models was evaluated with fivefold cross-validation. Combines with deep learning and machine learning technologies, the better results in the case of small samples were achieved. Using the coefficient of determination (R²), the ResNet50 + SVR model shows best performance in five basic pulmonary function parameters evaluation as FEV1(0.94), FEV1%(0.84), FEV1/FVC(0.68), FVC(0.92), and FVC%(0.72). This ResNet50 + SVR hybrid model shows excellent evaluation of pulmonary function parameters during coughing, making it possible to realize a simple and rapid evaluation for pneumonia patients. The technology implemented in this paper is beneficial in judge the patient's condition, realize early screening of respiratory diseases, evaluate postoperative disease changes and detect respiratory infectious diseases without time and location restrictions.