Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 64 (2021) 102313

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Biomedical Signal Processing and Control

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bspc

Respiratory sound denoising using Empirical Mode Decomposition, Hurst

analysis and Spectral Subtraction
Nishi Shahnaj Haider
Biomedical Engineering Department, Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, 641114, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Chronic pulmonary diseases, specifically Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), is in third position for
Chronic pulmonary disease causing deaths all over the globe. Misdiagnosis and higher health care cost is the reason behind the heavy loss of
Denoising life every year. To detect such diseases, computerized respiratory sound based diagnosis is one of the non-
Empirical Mode Decomposition
invasive, economical, convenient and harmless procedures, which could be one of the solutions to this acute
Hurst analysis
Respiratory sound
problem. But, this diagnostic method is often affected due to noise issues. This paper presents a new method to
Spectral subtraction denoise the respiratory sound using empirical mode decomposition (EMD), Hurst analysis and spectral sub­
traction. Using this algorithm, the highest signal to noise ratio (SNR) acquired is 27.32 dB and the peak signal to
noise ratio (PSNR) is 43.23 dB. The proposed denoising algorithm could be a significant approach for assisting
clinicians to make clear interpretations from the respiratory sound. The future work will be based on the
elimination of heart sound noises from the respiratory sound signal.

1. Introduction heart sound interferences, power line interferences and ambient

Pulmonary Function Testing and radiographic techniques are the
techniques which are often preferred for diagnosing pulmonary dis­
eases. Other preferred diagnostic methods are imaging techniques like
computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), single
photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission
tomography (PET), High cost factor and harmful radiographic exposure
limits the use of imaging techniques for diagnosing pulmonary diseases
[1]. Globally, more than 3 million people affected with pulmonary
diseases are losing their lives every year due to misdiagnosis and higher
health care cost [2–5]. The diagnosis of pulmonary diseases based on
respiratory sound is one of the cost-effective, non-invasive, accurate and
economical solutions to the problem of costly and ineffective diagnostic
methods available so far [6]. Respiratory sound or lung sounds are the
sounds produced within the lungs, as during the breathing process the
air flow presses the walls of the respiratory organs, which can be heard
through a stethoscope over the chest walls [6,7]. Recording artifacts,
acoustic interferences are the different types of noises which overlap
with the respiratory sound during its acquisition [7,8]. Heart sounds are
produced due to the vibration of blood movement against the cardiac
valve, during the open and close movement of the cardiac valve during
the cardiac cycle [9]. The heart is very close to the lungs. Therefore,
heart sound (HS) is unpreventable noise, which overlaps throughout the
lung sound signal [10]. Noise can be regarded as the unwanted and
unavoidable non-breathing signal which superimposes with the actual
respiratory sound signal thereby degrading its quality. Computerized
respiratory sound based interpretations will be more and more effective
if the respiratory sound signal is noise free [11–14].
There are numerous researches available to denoise the respiratory
sound signal. Hadjileontiadis et al. [15] introduced the combination of
fractal dimension (FD) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD)
method to eliminate the noise contaminants present in the lung sound
signal. Tsalaile et al. [16] evaluated blind source extraction (BSE) al­
gorithm for the separation of lung sound and HS signal. Mondal et al.

Abbreviations: ALE, Adaptive Line Enhancer; ANN, Artificial Neural Network; ANOVA, Analysis of Variance; ARMA, Auto Regressive and Moving Average; BSE,
Blind Source Extraction; BSS, Blind Source Separation; COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease; CC, Cross Correlation; CT, Computed Tomography; DFT,
Discrete Fourier Transform; EMD, Empirical Mode Decomposition; FD, Fractal Dimension; FIR, Finite Impulse Response; FFT, Fast Fourier Transform; FPGA, Field
Programmable Gate Array; HS, Heart Sound; ICF, Instantaneous Cycle Frequency; IMF, Intrinsic Mode Function; MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging; MSE, Mean
Squared Error; MAE, Mean Absolute Error; NMF, Nonnegative Matrix Factorization; PET, Positron Emission Tomography; PSNR, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio; SNR,
Signal to Noise Ratio; SDR, Signal to Distortion Ratio; SPECT, Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography; S-G, Savitzky-Golay; STFT, Short-Time Fourier
Transform; WT, Wavelet Transform.
E-mail address: nishishahnaj@karunya.edu.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2020.102313
Received 29 April 2020; Received in revised form 23 July 2020; Accepted 1 November 2020
Available online 9 November 2020
1746-8094/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
N.S. Haider
[17] proposed EMD for reduction of HS noise from lung sound. This
method was found more preferable in terms of the frequency domain,
time domain and time–frequency domain representations. Li et al. [18]
introduced the removal of HS contaminations from lung sound using
cyclostationarity. This study demonstrated a short-time cyclic frequency
spectrum to estimate the instantaneous cycle frequency (ICF) to predict
the frequency of HS. Such ICF’s were removed to reduce the cyclic
components from recorded lung sound. Zivanovic et al. [19] demon­
strated the rejection of HS from lung sound using quasi-periodic signal
modeling. The HS quasi periodicity was modeled with the help of single
and piecewise polynomials. These modeling supported the correct
characterization of HS components. Such efficient HS characterization,
supported for effective HS localization and its removal from the lung
sound signal. Molaie et al. [20] investigated the lung sound denoising
using modified local projection algorithm. This method involved the
determination of stretching and folding features, which were extracted
from the selected curves of a trajectory, keeping in view of the chaotic
behavior of respiratory sound. Chao et al. [21] presented adaptive line
enhancer (ALE) for reduction of HS noises of the lung sound signal. It
was implemented using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).
Emmanouilidou et al. [22] proposed the adaptive subtraction scheme to
suppress the HS contaminations from lung sound. This algorithm was
suitable to handle additive noises, but neglected the convolutive and
nonlinear effects. Shah et al. [23] introduced modified nonnegative
matrix factorization (NMF) to separate cardiac and respiratory sounds.
This approach used two blind source separation (BSS) i.e.,
semi-supervised and unsupervised BSS method with a modified NMF.
The modified NMF method involved the application of spectral structure
of the recorded signal in matrix factorization, which resulted in effective
separation of cardiac and respiratory signal. Syahputra et al. [24]
introduced wavelet transforms based filter to denoise respiratory sound.
Recently, Emmanouilidou et al. [25] reported an algorithm to eliminate
various forms of noises from the respiratory sound acquired from the
pediatric population. In this study, HS was suppressed using static
discrete wavelet transform and auto regressive and moving average
(ARMA) model. The author has used adaptive spectral subtraction to
suppress ambient noises from respiratory sound. Mondal et al. [26]
introduced EMD technique and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) based
prediction algorithm for HS rejection from lung sound signal and got
success to some extent in denoising lung sound. Haider et al. [7]
demonstrated respiratory sound denoising using Savitzky-Golay (S-G)
filter. The study had attempted to suppress various noise contaminations
from the lung sound signal. Meng et al. [27] presented an integrated
lung sound denoising algorithm using Finite Impulse Response (FIR)
band-pass filter, modified wavelet filter and adaptive filter. Most
recently, Shi et al. [28] reported lung sound denoising using wavelet
decomposition method to remove noises from both healthy as well as
unhealthy lung sounds.
There are a lot of literatures available to denoise the respiratory
sound signal. But, the existing studies have certain limitations. Most of
the available studies were dependent on the requirement of the prior
signal knowledge to get the better denoising outcome. Moreover, some
literatures have conducted their study using a few lung sound signals. It
is appreciable that most of the authors of the literature [15,17,26] have
preferred empirical mode decomposition method for lung sound
denoising. EMD is one of the method which is often adopted for HS
signal suppression from the lung sound signal. But, due to heavy noise
issues, intrinsic mode function (IMF) selection in EMD becomes very
difficult. To address this issue, the present study has introduced Hurst
analysis for proper IMF selection in EMD method. In addition to this, in
order to bring further improvement in denoising outcome, spectral
subtraction is also used, which is a well known method often adopted for
any audio signal denoising. Therefore, the present study introduces the
combination of EMD, Hurst analysis and spectral subtraction for
denoising lung sound, which is a novel approach to suppress all forms of
noises from the lung sound signal.
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Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 64 (2021) 102313
The contribution of the present work is:
(a) To develop a unique denoising algorithm using Empirical Mode
Decomposition (EMD), Hurst analysis and spectral subtraction.
(b) To test the efficacy of the proposed algorithm on the large data
set. The data set used in study includes 30 COPD and 30 healthy
lung sounds.
(c) The performance of the denoising algorithm is tested on both the
normal as well as abnormal lung sound.
The remaining part of the article is organized as: the second section
includes the discussion on the material and methods. In this section, the
data collection, implementation of algorithms for lung sound denoising
and performance evaluation is described. The third section involves the
result and discussion. Finally, the article is ended with the conclusion
and future scope.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Data set
The lung sound specimens used in the study include thirty COPD
lung sounds and thirty healthy lung sounds which are downloaded from
the various web sources like kaggle.com, breathe.missouri.edu, wilkes.
med.ucla.edu, depts.washington.edu, littmann.com, impactednurse.
com, meded.ucsd.edu and easyauscultation.com. Each downloaded
lung sound data are of 20 s duration.
2.2. Implementation of denoising algorithm using Empirical Mode
Decomposition, Hurst analysis and Spectral Subtraction
The implementation of the denoising algorithm is discussed in the
following section.
2.2.1. Empirical Mode Decomposition and Hurst analysis
Lung sound is a non-stationary signal by nature [22]. Empirical
Mode Decomposition (EMD) is one of the data driven algorithms
introduced by Norden E. Huang in 1996 [23], which is widely used for
analyzing the non-stationary and non-linear data [26]. It is the most
suitable technique available for time-frequency analysis of signal [29].
This method is widely acceptable in analyzing the biomedical data [30].
With this method, the complex data set is split into a small number of
mono-component signals, which is known as intrinsic mode functions
(IMF). This decomposition method is highly efficient as the entire pro­
cedure is adaptive, intuitive, free of basis function and empirical by
nature [23,26]. Due to its adaptive nature, this method circumvents the
limitations of the conventional methods like Short-Time Fourier Trans­
form (STFT), Wavelet Transform (WT), Discrete Fourier Transform
(DFT), etc. This method allows the signal components to be filtered
individually rather than the filtration of the entire signal at a time [19].
Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) is a symbol of oscillatory mode included
in the data signal, which behaves as a basis function. The searching
process for obtaining IMF is an iterative process called sifting [31]. An
IMF must be selected in such a way that it should satisfy the two
conditions:
a) The zero crossings and number of extrema should be either equal or
differ by one,
b) The mean value of local maxima and minima should be zero [29].
Following is the algorithm for EMD-
i. Determine the extrema of lung sound signal ‘y(t)’.
ii. The maxima and minima are to be connected with cubic spline
lines, to obtain the upper ‘yu(t)’ and lower ‘yl(t)’ envelopes.
iii. Find out the mean values of the envelopes as shown below:
N.S. Haider Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 64 (2021) 102313

m(t) = (yu (t) + yl (t))/2 (1) The above Eq. (3) can be represented in frequency domain as follows:
Y(jω) = P(jω) + N(jω) (4)
iv. Calculate the deviation of the data from the average of the en­
velope ‘m(t)’, and designate it as ‘d(t)’. Or
v. Substitute the original signal ‘y(t)’ as ‘d(t)’, and repeat the step i) P(jω) = Y(jω) − N(jω)
to iv).
vi. Check whether the ‘d(t)’ is an IMF or not, if it is an IMF then Where, ‘N(jω)’, ‘P(jω)’ and ‘Y(jω)’ are the Fourier transforms of ‘n(t)’, ‘p
substitute ‘r(t)’ as: (t)’ and ‘y(t)’. As static values of noise are unknown, hence, replacing
r(t) = y(t) − d(t) (2) noise and lung sound signal with the estimated value as shown in Eq. (5).
( ) ( ) ( )
̂ jω = Y
P ̂ jω − N ̂ jω (5)
vii. Repeat the above steps i) to vi) using the residue ‘r(t)’ as the data.
viii. This operation stops when the residue ‘r(t)’ contains no more Noise estimate is calculated as follows:
than one extremum.
1∑k− 1
E[|N(jω)|] = |Ni (jω)| (6)
k i=0
Fig. 1 demonstrates the procedure of lung sound denoising using the
EMD method. Noises often affect the selected IMF. To solve this prob­
Where, ‘|Ni(jω)|’ represents the amplitude spectrum of noise at ith out of
lem, Hurst exponent is employed to select the appropriate IMF for lung
‘k’ frames. ‘E[|N(jω)|]’ is the expected noise spectrum. Later on, noise is
sound signal reconstruction. Hurst exponent statistics is adopted for
filtered with a first order low pass filter to evaluate the noise estimate at
identifying and selecting the set of IMF’s that are mostly affected by the
kth frame as shown in Eq. (7).
noise components. Moreover, the lung sound signal was reconstructed
( ) ⃒ ( )
by considering the least corrupted IMF [32]. ( )⃒
N̂ k jω = ⃒⃒Nk ∼ jω ⃒⃒ = λn |Nk− 1 (jω)| + 1 − λn |Nk (jω)| (7)
2.2.2. Spectral subtraction
Spectral subtraction is an effective tool for suppressing the audio Here filtering coefficient is ‘λn’ whose value lies in between 0.5 to 0.9.
noise. The average signal spectrum and average noise spectrum are ∼
‘Nk (jω)’ represents the smoothed form of noise estimate at ith frame. The
computed and these values are subtracted to obtain an enhanced signal spectral subtraction error ‘e’ may be described as given below:
to noise ratio (SNR) [33]. The implementation of the spectral subtrac­ ( ) ( )
tion algorithm is discussed below. e=P ̂ jω − P jω (8)
Let lung sound signal ‘y(t)’ is a noisy signal which can be described as
a sum of original desired lung sound signal ‘p(t)’ and noise signal ‘n(t)’. This error causes the deterioration in signal quality, which in­
troduces distortion called musical noise or residual noise. This error can
y(t) = p(t) + n(t) (3)
be represented as a function of ‘E[|N(jω)|]’ or average noise spectral
estimate as shown below:
⃒ ⃒
⃒ ⃒
e = N(jω) − E[|N(jω)|] ≅ ⃒N(jω)⃒ − E[|N(jω)|] (9)

A prior SNR is calculated for clean signal and a posteriori SNR is

calculated for noisy signal at kth frame in frequency domain as follows:
( )
|P (jω)|2
SNRapriori
k ω = def k (10)
|Nk (jω)|2
( )
|Yk (jω)|2
SNRaposteriori
k ω = def (11)
|Nk (jω)|2

Here SNRapriori
k (ω) is the SNR for a clean signal. SNRaposteriori
k (ω) is the
posteriori SNR for noisy signal at kth frame in frequency domain. A
priori signal to noise ratio is computed during restoration, as the clean
signal is unknown. The optimal SNR value in kth frame can be calculated
using Gaussian model as:
⃒ ⃒2
⃒̂ ⃒
( ) ⃒ P k− 1 (jω)⃒
SNRapriori
k (ω ) = (1 − η )Q SNRapriori
k (ω) − 1 + η (12)
var(Nk− 1 (jω))
( )
|Yk (jω)|2
SNRaposteriori
k ω = (13)
var(Nk (jω))

( {
x; forx ≥ 0
Here, Q x) =
0; Otherwise
‘ P(j
̂ ω)’ is the estimate value of restored signal, ‘η’ is a constant whose
value lies between 0.9 to 0.98. The variance of the noise spectrum in the
preceding frame is ‘var(Nk− 1(jω))’ and is replaced by the spectral power
of estimated noise.
Fig. 1. Empirical Mode Decomposition.

3
N.S. Haider
2.3. Proposed methodology
The lung sound signals are downloaded and saved as.wav files. Each
lung sound signal is sampled at a sampling rate of 4000 Hz. Each lung
sound signal is first allowed to pass through a Butterworth Band-pass
filter of order 6, tuned at a pass-band of 20–2000 Hz. This eliminates
all the high frequency noises from the lung sound signal. There is a
possibility that there may be noises overlapped with the lung sound
signal in the chosen band. This frequency band of signals is then sub­
jected to empirical mode decomposition and Hurst analysis to filter out
the noises present in the lung sound signal. The spectral subtraction
method is later applied to get further improvement in denoising
outcome. The performance evaluation of the present denoising algo­
rithm is then carried out to evaluate the denoising performance. This
denoising algorithm is tested on 30 COPD lung sounds and 30 healthy
lung sound signals.
2.4. Performance evaluation
The performance of the denoising algorithm is evaluated using pa­
rameters like mean squared error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE),
cross correlation (CC), signal to noise ratio (SNR) and peak signal to
noise ratio (PSNR). Mean squared error (MSE) is the quantity which
measures the average of the square of the mean differences between
estimated and real value. Mean absolute errors (MAE) determines the
average of the absolute error. It determines the closeness between the
predicted value and the actual value. Cross correlation (CC) is another
important parameter which represents the similarity between two sig­
nals i.e., noisy signal and denoised signal. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) is
calculated as the 20log10 of ratio of root mean square of the signal to the
root mean square of noise. Peak signal to ratio (PSNR) is determined as
the ratio of the maximum power of a signal to the noise power. The input
and the output waveforms are analyzed based on these performance
parameters. The entire work is carried out in Matlab environment.
3. Results
The waveform of the original noisy COPD lung sound signal before
denoising operation is as shown in Fig. 2(a). Fig. 2(b) represents the
waveform of the COPD lung sound signal obtained after denoising
operation using the proposed denoising algorithm. Fig. 3(a) & (b) re­
flects the single-sided amplitude spectrum of the original noisy COPD
Fig. 2. a) Original Noisy COPD lung sound signal, 2(b) COPD lung sound signal after denoising.
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Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 64 (2021) 102313
lung sound signal obtained before denoising and the single-sided
amplitude spectrum of the COPD lung sound signal obtained after
denoising, respectively. Single-sided amplitude spectrum is plotted to
observe the presence of noise portions being suppressed by this
denoising algorithm. Amplitude spectrum actually represents the dis­
tribution of amplitude with respect to frequency. With the help of
amplitude spectrum shown in Fig. 3(a) & (b), it is clear that the most of
the high amplitudes of noise portions are eliminated from the noisy lung
sound signal. Similarly, Fig. 4(a) shows the healthy lung sound signal
before denoising, Fig. 4(b) depicts the healthy lung sound signal after
denoising operation. Fig. 5(a) and (b) depicts the single-sided amplitude
spectrum obtained before and after denoising operation of healthy lung
sound signal, respectively. Table 1 shows the values of performance
parameters like MSE, MAE, CC, SNR and PSNR. Based on the obtained
values of the performance parameters, the effectiveness of the denoising
algorithm is evaluated. The denoising algorithm is tested on both normal
as well as abnormal lung sound signals. The denoising operation is
performed on a total 30 healthy lung sounds and 30 COPD lung sounds.
The performance parameters of this denoising method are computed
to validate the outcome. The proposed method is tested on each lung
sound and the performance parameters are computed for each lung
sound. Table 1 represents the obtained performance evaluation pa­
rameters of the best 6 COPD and 6 healthy lung sounds out of 30 COPD
and 30 healthy lung sounds. The computation of SNR and PSNR value
depends on the noise power. Sometimes the lung sound signal is highly
corrupted, sometimes least corrupted, hence, a lot of variations are seen
in SNR and PSNR values in case of different COPD and healthy lung
sounds as shown in Table 1. The best six performances of the proposed
method for denoising in case of both the COPD and healthy lung sounds
is demonstrated in Table 1. It helps in identifying the greatest denoising
performance achieved using this method. From Table 1 it is observed
that MSE is zero for healthy and COPD lung sound. MAE is observed to
be zero or almost close to zero for both COPD and healthy lung sounds.
Ideally, MSE and MAE values should be zero. As per Table 1, CC is found
to be 1 or close to 1 in case of both COPD and healthy lung sounds.
Ideally, the value of CC should be 1. The highest SNR value obtained is
27.32 dB and the higher PSNR value is 43.23 dB in case of COPD lung
sounds. In case of healthy lung sounds, the highest SNR value observed is
25.17 dB and the higher PSNR value is 43.16 dB. The denoising per­
formance of the present method is found to be closer in case of both
COPD and healthy lung sounds. As a whole, it can be concluded that the
highest SNR achieved using this algorithm is 27.32 dB and the higher
N.S. Haider
Fig. 3. a) Single-sided amplitude spectrum of original noisy COPD lung sound signal, 3(b) Single-sided amplitude spectrum of the COPD lung sound signal obtained
after denoising.
Fig. 4. a) Original healthy lung sound signal before denoising, 4(b) Healthy lung sound signal obtained after denoising.
PSNR is 43.23 dB, which is a considerably higher value. Thus, the
denoising algorithm has successfully denoised the lung sound signal.
4. Discussion
The present study is a novel contribution towards the lung sound
signal denoising. This study involves the integration of few denoising
algorithms like empirical mode decomposition, Hurst analysis and
spectral subtraction. The study has introduced a large data set for testing
this denoising operation. Empirical mode-decomposition is a widely
acceptable denoising algorithm used for denoising the biomedical data.
While using EMD, the selection of IMF value becomes ambiguous due to
the presence of heavy noises throughout the lung sound signal. This
difficulty is sorted by using Hurst analysis, as it supports for the
appropriate IMF selection. Apart from this, spectral subtraction is also
integrated to bring more improvement in the denoising performance,
which is a well-known method applicable for denoising audio signals.
5
Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 64 (2021) 102313
Therefore, this combination of EMD, Hurst analysis and spectral sub­
traction for denoising lung sound is introduced in this article.
Numerous studies are available in the area of lung sound signal
denoising. However, there are certain drawbacks in the existing studies.
Table 2 clearly demonstrate the comparison of the proposed study with
respect to all the existing ones. Algorithmic complexity and difficulty in
IMF selection were the limitations of using the EMD and FD for noise
elimination proposed by Hadjileontiadis et al. [15]. BSE algorithm was
examined for the HS noise elimination from the lung sound signal by
Tsalaile et al. [16]. The denoising performance was totally dependent on
prior signal knowledge. EMD method was used for reducing HS noise
from lung sound by Mondal et al. [17]. The selection of IMF was diffi­
cult. Another study introduced short time cyclic frequency computation
to obtain the ICF of the HS signal to estimate the heart beat frequency.
Those frequencies near to HS frequencies range were removed to
denoise lung sound signal [17], but it eliminated many portions of the
original lung sound signal. Moreover, the study was conducted over a
N.S. Haider Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 64 (2021) 102313

Fig. 5. a) Single sided amplitude spectrum of a healthy lung sound signal before denoising, (b) Single-sided amplitude spectrum of healthy lung sound signal
obtained after denoising.

result quality could be affected on selection of small threshold value.

Table 1
The study proposed by Emmanouilidou et al. [25], had focused on the
Performance parameters.
pediatric lung sound denoising using static discrete wavelet transform,
Data Lung Sound MSE MAE SNR (in PSNR (in CC adaptive spectral subtraction & ARMA modeling. The methodology
Signal dB) dB)
successfully denoised lung sound signal to some extent. It should be
Subject1 0.00 0.00 27.32 43.23 1.00 tested on lung sounds acquired from different age group people as well.
Subject2 0.00 0.005 26.11 42.77 1.0
Most recently, EMD technique and prediction algorithm was proposed
COPD lung Subject3 0.00 0.01 20.64 38.21 0.99
sound Subject4 0.00 0.004 24.45 41.24 0.99
by Mondal et al. [26] for suppressing HS noise from lung sound. The
Subject5 0.00 0.01 20.44 35.17 0.98 high SDR was found to be 9.8 dB, and CC was 0.95. It was observed that
Subject6 0.00 0.01 15.45 34.41 0.98 IMF computation was found to be difficult due to the effect of noise.
Subject1 0.00 0.002 25.17 43.16 1.0 Literature [7] showed the lung sound denoising using Savitzky-Golay
Subject2 0.00 0.002 25.17 42.26 0.99
(S-G) filter. The optimal parameter tuning was done manually, hence
Healthy lung Subject3 0.00 0.005 20.59 40.08 0.99
sound Subject4 0.00 0.01 17.29 37.34 0.99 it was very tedious. Another study used integrated algorithm, including
Subject5 0.00 0.01 13.67 36.07 0.99 FIR band-pass filter, modified wavelet filter and adaptive filter to
Subject6 0.00 0.01 15.28 30.48 0.98 denoise lung sound [27]. Only moderate denoising outcome was ob­
Note: MSE-Mean Squared Error, MAE-Mean Absolute Error, SNR-Signal to Noise tained. The original signal was found to be degraded using this method.
Ratio, PSNR-Peak Signal To Noise Ratio, CC-Cross Correlation. The wavelet denoising method was presented by Shi et al. [28]. The
study got the success to a certain level but more emphasis on denoising
few data sets. Quasi-periodic signal modeling was proposed by Ziva­ performance evaluation was required.
novic et al. [19] to remove HS noise from lung sound. The high signal to Enormous work has been done in the area of lung sound denoising.
distortion (SDR) ratio achieved was 13.22 dB. The study was very Available studies have produced appreciable outcomes. However, they
complex as data set was assumed over variable flow rates. Another study have certain drawbacks. Most of the studies have used limited data sets.
showed the lung sound denoising using modified local projection algo­ The denoising performance of few studies was dependent on prior
rithm introduced by Molae et al. [20]. The implementation of the knowledge of lung sound signal. Moreover, methodologies used by
modified local projection algorithm was tedious and lengthy as it in­ various studies were very lengthy and complex. Most of the authors have
cludes complex folding and stretching process for selecting curve out of preferred EMD method to denoise lung sound, but IMF selection was
trajectory. Another study demonstrated HS noise elimination using ALE found challenging because of the presence of heavy noise contamina­
reported by Chao et al. [21]. In that study, the denoising performance tions in lung sound signal. The present article has brought a significant
evaluation was not carried out. The adaptive suppression algorithm was solution to this problem by introducing Hurst analysis for IMF selection
applied for lung sound denoising by Emmanouilidou et al. [22]. The while using EMD. In addition, the proposed study has also used spectral
noise suppression using this method was found fully dependent on prior subtraction along with EMD and Hurst analysis, to improve the
signal knowledge. The study was confined only for denoising pediatric denoising outcome. Moreover, the present study is conducted over a
lung sound. The study was not suitable when signal and noise were large data set of 30 COPD and 30 healthy lung sound. The study is
correlated. Recently, modified NMF was proposed by Shah et al. [23] to capable of eliminating noise from both the healthy and COPD lung
eliminate the HS contaminations from lung sound. The denoising per­ sounds. After evaluating the performance parameters as shown in
formance was 94%, but the study was tested only on 8 data sets. The Table 1, it is found that using this proposed algorithm, the highest SNR
wavelet transform based filter for denoising lung sound was suggested achieved is 27.32 dB and the highest PSNR is 43.23 dB, which is a
by Syahputra et al. [24]. The study was conducted only on few data considerably higher value. It is also observed that the denoising per­
samples. Apart with this, the study was restricted to the threshold se­ formance is found to be similar in case of both healthy and COPD lung
lection. It was observed that the algorithm could not denoise the lung sounds. Table 2 shows the comparison of the proposed work against all
sound signal, on selection of very large threshold value, whereas, the the existing work. It is clear that the proposed work produces superior

6
N.S. Haider Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 64 (2021) 102313

Table 2
Comparison of proposed method against the existing methods.
SN First Author & Year No. of data used Denoising method Limitation/Challenges Performance

1. Hadjileontiadis et al. 16 Lung sounds EMD and FD filter IMF selection was difficult due to overlapped Total performance = 98%
[15] (2007) noise segments. Denoising algorithm was
complex.
2. Tsalaile et al. [16] Not clear BSE Prior knowledge of signal of interest was SNR = 10 dB
(2008) required.
3. Mondal et al. [17] 39 Lung sound EMD IMF selection was difficult due to overlapped Percentage of HS
(2011) noise segments. reduction = 89.71%
4. Li et al. [18] (2013) 6 Healthy lung sound Short-time cyclic frequency spectrum The study used limited data sets. Denoising –
performance evaluation was not done.
5. Zivanovic et al. [19] 20 Lung sound Quasi-periodic signal modeling The study was limited for denoising lung SDR = 13.22 dB
(2013) sounds acquired at low flow rate.
6. Molaie et al. [20] Not clear Modified local projection algorithm Curve selection from trajectory was lengthy SNR = 22.98 dB
(2014) and tedious.
7. Chao et al. [21] (2014) Not clear Adaptive line enhancer Denoising performance evaluation was not –
done.
8. Emmanouilidou et al. Lung sound recorded Adaptive subtraction scheme Denoising performance was dependent on Segmental signal-to-noise
[22] (2015) from 17 physicians prior signal knowledge. ratio (fSNRseg) = 1.02
9. Shah et al. [23] (2014) 8 Lung sound Modified nonnegative matrix The algorithm was tested on limited data set. Normalized mean square
factorization (NMF) error = 94.3%
10. Syahputra et al. [24] 10 Lung sound Wavelet transforms based filter The denoising performance was dependent SNR = 74.37 dB
on threshold selection, which was very
complex.
11. Emmanouilidou et al. Lung sound of 1157 Static discrete wavelet transform, The study was confined on denoising lung Signal quality was
[25] (2017) children adaptive spectral subtraction & ARMA sounds acquired from pediatric population. improved.
model
12. Mondal et al. [26] 28 Pathological and 5 EMD technique and FFT based IMF selection was difficult due to noise issues SDR = 9.8262 dB
(2017) healthy lung sound prediction algorithm
13. Haider et al. [7] (2017) 30 Healthy subjects S-G filter Optimal parameter tuning was very tedious. SNR = 10.4 dB
lung sound
14. Meng et al. [27] (2019) 11 Patient’s lung sound FIR band-pass filter and a modified Threshold selection was complex. Original –
wavelet filter and an adaptive filter signal was found to be degraded after
denoising.
15. Shi et al. [28] (2019) 64 Lung sound Wavelet decomposition Denoising performance evaluation was not –
done.
16. Proposed method 30 COPD & 30 healthy EMD and spectral subtraction – SNR = 27.32 dB, PSNR =
lung sound 43.23 dB

denoising performance in contrast to all the related work. Hence, this Appendix A. Supplementary data
denoising method is proved to be a significant method to denoise lung
sound. This method can assist clinicians to denoise lung sound to get Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the
clear lung sound for further use. online version, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2020.102313.

5. Conclusion and future scope References

This article presents a unique approach to denoise the respiratory
sound using empirical mode decomposition (EMD), Hurst analysis and
spectral subtraction. It is a novel integration of a few methods to get a
better denoising outcome. EMD is a better way to suppress noise con­
taminations from a non-stationary signal. However, IMF selection used
to be very critical because of overlapping of noise contaminations
throughout the lung sound signal. To sort out this problem, Hurst
analysis is introduced, which makes the IMF selection smoother. In
addition to this, spectral subtraction is also integrated to bring better
denoising performance. This proposed method outperformed, with the
SNR of 27.32 dB and PSNR of 43.23 dB, which is higher in comparison to
all the existing methods. The proposed method is able to denoise lung
sound acquired from both healthy and unhealthy subjects. Therefore,
the proposed work is significantly better to eliminate the noise con­
taminations very well. Future work will be based on development of a
method to suppress the HS contaminations from lung sound signals in a
more better way. The present denoising operation is not tested on lung
sounds recorded at the different air flow rate. This also will be a part of
future endeavors.
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Declaration of Competing Interest
[12] S. Boll, Suppression of acoustic noise in speech using Spectral Subtraction, IEEE
The authors report no declarations of interest.
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