[LEOSound, an innovative procedure for acoustic long-term monitoring of asthma symptoms (wheezing and coughing) in children and adults].
Particularly in young children the diagnosis of asthma is difficult and mostly based on clinical symptoms like wheezing, cough and dyspnea. Children with nocturnal wheezing often suffer from a low quality of sleep and impaired sense of well-being during the day. Physicians recommend that parents record the frequency of asthma attacks or symptoms to help manage their children's disease. The lack of an appropriate method for standardized and objective monitoring makes asthma management difficult. The aim of this paper is to present a new method for automated wheeze and cough detection and analysis. The mobile LEOSound recording and analysing system described here should help improve diagnosis and monitoring of asthma symptoms in children.