Spectral Analysis of Cough Sounds in Patients with Chronic Bronchitis

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Andrey V. Budnevsky, Sergey N. Avdeev, Evgeniy S. Ovsyannikov, Anastasia V. Belyakova

 
For citation: Budnevsky AV, Avdeev SN, Ovsyannikov ES, Belyakova AV. Spectral Analysis of Cough Sounds in Patients with Chronic Bronchitis. International Journal of Biomedicine. 2025;15(2):285-290. doi:10.21103/Article15(2)_OA3
 
Originally published June 5, 2025
 

Abstract: 

Background: Cough is the main symptom of chronic bronchitis (CB). However, the literature does not provide information on the characteristics of the cough sound in CB patients. The objective of this study was to conduct a spectral analysis of the cough sound in CB patients compared with the cough in patients with bronchial asthma (BA), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and an induced cough in healthy individuals.
Methods and Results: The study's main group consisted of 60 patients with CB in the stage of exacerbation (46.6% men and 53.4% women; mean age of 47.6 (46; 49) years). The comparison groups consisted of patients with BA (n=21), COPD (n=20), COVID-19 (n=20) and healthy individuals (n=20). The cough sounds were recorded using the spectral tussophonobarography method based on the Fast Fourier Transform Algorithm, allowing the distribution of sound energy by frequency. We estimated the time-frequency parameters of sounds of the entire cough episode, as well as for separated phases of the cough sound: duration (T, T1, T2, T3), the ratio of the energy of low and medium frequencies (60–600Hz) to the energy of high frequencies (600–6000Hz) (Q, Q1, Q2, Q3), and the frequency of maximum sound energy (Hz) (Fmax, Fmax1, Fmax2, Fmax3).
The cough parameters in the main group and the comparison groups had significant differences. Thus, the total duration of cough in CB patients was more prolonged than in COVID-19 patients. T1 and T3 were more extended in CB patients than in all comparison groups, and T2 was shorter than in patients with BA, COPD, and healthy individuals.
In the second cough phase, low-frequency energy was predominant in patients with CB, compared to BA. In contrast, the lowest frequencies were predominant in COPD patients, compared to CB patients.
Fmax and Fmax1 in CB were significantly lower than in BA patients. Fmax2 in CB patients was lower than in BA patients but higher than in healthy individuals with induced coughs. Fmax3 was significantly lower in CB than in all comparison groups.  The cough of patients with CB has reliable differences in the main frequency-time characteristics compared to the cough sound of patients with BA, COPD, and COVID-19. This may indicate that spectral tussophonobarography can help in the differential diagnosis of CB.

Keywords: 
cough • spectral sound analysis • chronic bronchitis
References: 
  1. Guide for General Practitioners (Family Doctors). Cough. 2015 Association of General Practitioners (Family Doctors) of the Russian Federation. (In Russian) Available from https://mirvracha.ru/article/kr_dlya_vop_kashel
  2. Zaitsev AA. Cough: problems and solutions. Practical pulmonology. 2020; 2:78-86 (In Russian). Available from https://chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www....
  3. Clinical Recommendations "Chronic Bronchitis" (approved by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, 2021). (In Russian). Available from https://spulmo.ru/upload/kr/OB_2022.pdf
  4. Kum E, Guyatt GH, Devji T, Wang Y, Bakaa L, Lan L, Liu E, Mastrolonardo A, Couban R, O'Byrne PM, Satia I. Cough symptom severity in patients with refractory or unexplained chronic cough: a systematic survey and conceptual framework. Eur Respir Rev. 2021 Jul 13;30(161):210104. doi: 10.1183/16000617.0104-2021. PMID: 34261745; PMCID: PMC9518000.
  5. Ovsyannikov ES, Аvdeev SN, Budnevskiy AV, Drobyshevа ES. [Cough Diagnosis: Present and Future]. Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases. 2021; 99(11):56-64. (In Russian). doi: 10.21292/2075-1230-2021-99-11-56-64
  6. Hoyos-Barceló C, Monge-Álvarez J, Pervez Z, San-José-Revuelta LM, Casaseca-de-la-Higuera P. Efficient computation of image moments for robust cough detection using smartphones. Comput Biol Med. 2018 Sep 1;100:176-185. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2018.07.003. Epub 2018 Jul 17. PMID: 30016745.
  7. Claxton S, Porter P, Brisbane J, Bear N, Wood J, Peltonen V, Della P, Smith C, Abeyratne U. Identifying acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using patient-reported symptoms and cough feature analysis. NPJ Digit Med. 2021 Jul 2;4(1):107. doi: 10.1038/s41746-021-00472-x. PMID: 34215828; PMCID: PMC8253790.
  8. Averyanov AV, Pashkova TL. [Tussography is a method of cough monitoring]. Pulmonologiya. 1998;(2):28-30. (In Russian).
  9. Semenkova GG, Provotorov VM, Ovsyannikov ES. [Study of cough caused by gastroesophageal reflux disease using tussography and spectral tussophobarography methods]. Pulmonology. 2006;(6):56-61. (In Russian)
  10. Morice AH, Kitt MM, Ford AP, Tershakovec AM, Wu WC, Brindle K, Thompson R, Thackray-Nocera S, Wright C. The effect of gefapixant, a P2X3 antagonist, on cough reflex sensitivity: a randomised placebo-controlled study. Eur Respir J. 2019 Jul 4;54(1):1900439. doi: 10.1183/13993003.00439-2019. PMID: 31023843.
  11. Budnevsky AV, Avdeev SN, Ovsyannikov ES, Feigelman SN, Choporov ON, Maksimov AV, Pertsev AV. [Spectral analysis of cough sounds in patients with COVID-19]. Pulmonology. 2022;32(6):834-841. (In Russian) doi:10.18093/0869-0189-2022-32-6-834-841
  12. Budnevsky AV, Ovsyannikov ES, Avdeev SN, et al. [The role of spectral analysis of cough sounds in the diagnosis of COVID-19]. Therapeutic archive. 2024; 96(3):228-232 (In Russian) doi: 10.26442/00403660.2024.03.202636
  13. Kelsall A, Decalmer S, Webster D, Brown N, McGuinness K, Woodcock A, Smith J. How to quantify coughing: correlations with quality of life in chronic cough. Eur Respir J. 2008 Jul;32(1):175-9. doi: 10.1183/09031936.00101307. Epub 2008 Feb 20. PMID: 18287128.
  14. Chang AB, Irwin RS, O'Farrell HE, Dicpinigaitis PV, Goel S, Kantar A, Marchant JM. Cough Hypersensitivity Syndrome: Why Its Use Is Inappropriate in Children. J Clin Med. 2023 Jul 25;12(15):4879. doi: 10.3390/jcm12154879. PMID: 37568280; PMCID: PMC10419757.
  15. Zhang M, Sykes DL, Brindle K, Sadofsky LR, Morice AH. Chronic cough-the limitation and advances in assessment techniques. J Thorac Dis. 2022 Dec;14(12):5097-5119. doi: 10.21037/jtd-22-874. PMID: 36647459; PMCID: PMC9840016.
  16. Hall JI, Lozano M, Estrada-Petrocelli L, et al. The present and future of cough counting tools. J Thorac Dis 2020;12:5207-23. 10.21037/jtd-2020-icc-003
  17. Turner RD, Birring SS. Measuring cough: what really matters? J Thorac Dis. 2023 Apr 28;15(4):2288-2299. doi: 10.21037/jtd-23-230. PMID: 37197542; PMCID: PMC10183488.
  18. Toop LJ, Thorpe CW, Fright R. Cough sound analysis: a new tool for the diagnosis of asthma? Fam Pract. 1989 Jun;6(2):83-5. doi: 10.1093/fampra/6.2.83. PMID: 2663580.
  19. Ovsyannikov ES, Avdeev SN, Budnevsky AV, Shkatova YS. Influence of Anxiety/Depression on the Subjective Evaluation of Cough in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Obesity. Medicina (Kaunas). 2019 May 14;55(5):134. doi: 10.3390/medicina55050134. PMID: 31091811; PMCID: PMC6572558.
  20. Wang Y, Wahab M, Hong T, Molinari K, Gauvreau GM, Cusack RP, Gao Z, Satia I, Fang Q. Automated Cough Analysis with Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network. Bioengineering (Basel). 2024 Nov 1;11(11):1105. doi: 10.3390/bioengineering11111105. PMID: 39593765; PMCID: PMC11591875.

Download Article
Received February 21, 2025.
Accepted April 9, 2025.
©2025 International Medical Research and Development Corporation.