Multi-resolution Decomposition Applied to Crackle Detection

Crackles are one of the most important physical signs in clinical medicine. They have an explosive pattern in time domain, with a rapid onset and short duration. The timing, repeatability, and shape of crackles are important parameters for diagnosis. Therefore, automatic detection of crackles and their classification as fine and coarse crackles have important clinical value. Since the multiresolution decomposition technique can give high resolution in both time and frequency, it can be exploited to detect crackles and classify them according to the information in each scales. In this paper, we present a new method for crackle detection based on continuous wavelet transform. Theory, methods and experimental results are given in detail in this paper.