Cough in Kids: Experts Working on New Technology to Correctly Identify Children's Respiratory Issues

Cough in Kids respiratory illness croup cough cough caused by asthma screening cough in kids Bidirectional Long-Short-Term Memory BiLSTM Professor Chen Jer-Ming from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) Professor Chen Jer-Ming Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) KK Women's and Children's Hospital Duke-NUS Medical School

By Lili Scott , Parent Herald Feb 04, 05:00 am

Photo: (Photo : Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The sound of cough in kids demonstrates a specific respiratory illness, but most parents can't tell the difference between a croup cough, a cough caused by asthma, or a cough that may lead to a serious problem. Experts from Singapore are working on a new technology that may provide a better way for efficiently screening cough in kids so they can get the correct treatment.

In a study published in the journal Sensors, the researchers said they are working on a "deep learning-based cough sound classification model." While the clinical deployment of the technology is still years away, the experts also plan to incorporate this technology, dubbed the Bidirectional Long-Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM), in a smartphone app to help the patients, their parents, and the doctors.

According to Professor Chen Jer-Ming from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), this study is just the first step in developing a more accurate way to "differentiate between different unhealthy cough sounds."

Training the Machine to Distinguish Cough in Kids

Chen's team is still training the machine to distinguish the different sounds of cough in kids from different recorded samples of the patients at the KK Women's and Children's Hospital and Duke-NUS Medical School. They recorded the sounds in a live hospital setting for accuracy.

The research group recorded 89 kids with asthma, 160 children with lower respiratory tract infections, and 78 kids with upper respiratory tract infections. They also recorded the coughing sounds of 89 healthy kids for comparison purposes.

So far, the machine has correctly identified cough in kids with 91.2 percent accuracy. The machine's accuracy ratio per sound is about 9:10. However, the machine is still learning to tell between the pathology of one cough compared to the other. It has incorrectly determined an asthma cough from a cough caused by a respiratory tract infection by 60 percent.

In an actual clinical setting, many doctors also make the mistake of differentiating cough in kids based on the sound alone. However, the researchers are still fine-tuning the technology as the study progresses into the next phases.

8 Types of Cough in Kids

According to Kids Health, there are at least eight types of cough in kids. A barky cough or croup, whooping cough, or a cough with wheezing are all indicative of an infection in the airways. A wheezing cough may be asthma or bronchiolitis, but it may also mean a blockage of a foreign object, like a small toy the child accidentally swallowed.

Kids also develop nighttime cough or daytime cough from issues with their sinuses, while cough with fever or cough with vomiting may be signs of flu, pneumonia, or an asthma flare-up. A persistent cough in kids may be a symptom of a chronic infection from a virus.

Most coughs run their course over two weeks and might not even require treatments, especially for children under six years old. However, if a cough affects a child's sleep or school activities, there are many over-the-counter treatments that stop the coughing but are not necessarily the cause. Thus, it's still important for the child to see his doctor for the proper diagnosis.