Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease Diagnosis

Respiratory diseases represent a significant health concern that attracts scientists and health professionals due to their impact on public health. Various techniques are used to identify respiratory conditions, from diagnosis to therapy, such as Computer Tomography (CT) scans and Chest X-ray (CXR)...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Houda Benaliouche, Houda Hafi, Hakim Bendjenna, Zeyad Alshaikh
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11008601/
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850175129000083456
author Houda Benaliouche
Houda Hafi
Hakim Bendjenna
Zeyad Alshaikh
author_facet Houda Benaliouche
Houda Hafi
Hakim Bendjenna
Zeyad Alshaikh
author_sort Houda Benaliouche
collection DOAJ
description Respiratory diseases represent a significant health concern that attracts scientists and health professionals due to their impact on public health. Various techniques are used to identify respiratory conditions, from diagnosis to therapy, such as Computer Tomography (CT) scans and Chest X-ray (CXR) images. However, these methods require expert radiologists for manual examination, posing time challenges. This is especially critical during a pandemic, where swift detection and early treatment are paramount. In this regard, an AI-based diagnostic system for automatic identification would play a major role, particularly regarding the analysis of patient cough patterns. Coughs, as a diagnostic cue, provide distinctive information about glottis behavior related to different respiratory pathological cases. This work proposes a comparative investigation of respiratory disease detection techniques using cough sounds, with COVID-19 as a case study. Our study involves the application of three distinct models: a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model, a CNN-Support Vector Machine (CNN-SVM) hybrid model, and a transfer learning-based model. We methodically evaluate different model architectures, ranging from custom-built networks to pre-trained deep models, applying spectrogram or Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) in transfer learning-based feature extraction, to determine which is the best approach in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and loss. The experimental findings highlight the superior performance of transfer learning and MFCC feature extraction upon deep learning results using CNN and CNN-SVM with best validation accuracies ranging from 99.55% to 100%. This significant advantage is attributed 1) the capacity of transfer learning to utilize prior knowledge from related domains, even in data-scarce target tasks, and 2) the proficiency of MFCC in capturing and representing the rich and essential information embedded within cough sounds. Furthermore, we propose an Android-based smartphone application that serves as a noninvasive and real-time prescreening tool. Our system holds significant importance to complement medical efforts containing respiratory diseases and pandemics in infected areas, making it applicable to any respiratory condition or pandemic where cough is a predominant symptom.
format Article
id doaj-art-29a3940a0c9b47468d4d41efcb32cd5a
institution OA Journals
issn 2169-3536
language English
publishDate 2025-01-01
publisher IEEE
record_format Article
series IEEE Access
spelling doaj-art-29a3940a0c9b47468d4d41efcb32cd5a2025-08-20T02:19:31ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-0113925549256810.1109/ACCESS.2025.357220211008601Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease DiagnosisHouda Benaliouche0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3918-5025Houda Hafi1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6042-388XHakim Bendjenna2Zeyad Alshaikh3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6099-695XFaculty of New Information and Communication Technologies, Abdelhamid Mehri Constantine 2 University, Constantine, AlgeriaFaculty of New Information and Communication Technologies, Abdelhamid Mehri Constantine 2 University, Constantine, AlgeriaLaboratory of Mathematics, Informatics, and Systems (LAMIS), Tebessa, AlgeriaDepartment of Computer Science, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaRespiratory diseases represent a significant health concern that attracts scientists and health professionals due to their impact on public health. Various techniques are used to identify respiratory conditions, from diagnosis to therapy, such as Computer Tomography (CT) scans and Chest X-ray (CXR) images. However, these methods require expert radiologists for manual examination, posing time challenges. This is especially critical during a pandemic, where swift detection and early treatment are paramount. In this regard, an AI-based diagnostic system for automatic identification would play a major role, particularly regarding the analysis of patient cough patterns. Coughs, as a diagnostic cue, provide distinctive information about glottis behavior related to different respiratory pathological cases. This work proposes a comparative investigation of respiratory disease detection techniques using cough sounds, with COVID-19 as a case study. Our study involves the application of three distinct models: a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model, a CNN-Support Vector Machine (CNN-SVM) hybrid model, and a transfer learning-based model. We methodically evaluate different model architectures, ranging from custom-built networks to pre-trained deep models, applying spectrogram or Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) in transfer learning-based feature extraction, to determine which is the best approach in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and loss. The experimental findings highlight the superior performance of transfer learning and MFCC feature extraction upon deep learning results using CNN and CNN-SVM with best validation accuracies ranging from 99.55% to 100%. This significant advantage is attributed 1) the capacity of transfer learning to utilize prior knowledge from related domains, even in data-scarce target tasks, and 2) the proficiency of MFCC in capturing and representing the rich and essential information embedded within cough sounds. Furthermore, we propose an Android-based smartphone application that serves as a noninvasive and real-time prescreening tool. Our system holds significant importance to complement medical efforts containing respiratory diseases and pandemics in infected areas, making it applicable to any respiratory condition or pandemic where cough is a predominant symptom.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11008601/Respiratory diseasescoughdeep learningtransfer learningCNNSVM
spellingShingle Houda Benaliouche
Houda Hafi
Hakim Bendjenna
Zeyad Alshaikh
Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease Diagnosis
IEEE Access
Respiratory diseases
cough
deep learning
transfer learning
CNN
SVM
title Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease Diagnosis
title_full Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease Diagnosis
title_fullStr Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease Diagnosis
title_full_unstemmed Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease Diagnosis
title_short Toward AI-Driven Cough Sound Analysis for Respiratory Disease Diagnosis
title_sort toward ai driven cough sound analysis for respiratory disease diagnosis
topic Respiratory diseases
cough
deep learning
transfer learning
CNN
SVM
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11008601/
work_keys_str_mv AT houdabenaliouche towardaidrivencoughsoundanalysisforrespiratorydiseasediagnosis
AT houdahafi towardaidrivencoughsoundanalysisforrespiratorydiseasediagnosis
AT hakimbendjenna towardaidrivencoughsoundanalysisforrespiratorydiseasediagnosis
AT zeyadalshaikh towardaidrivencoughsoundanalysisforrespiratorydiseasediagnosis