Abstract: A method for identifying segments of a digital audio recording of sounds from a subject, where the segments contain particular sound events of interest, the method comprising: filtering the digital audio recording based on a characteristic frequency range of the sound events to produce a filtered digital audio signal; processing the filtered digital audio signal to produce a corresponding signal envelope; fitting a statistical distribution to the signal envelope; determining a threshold level for the signal envelope based on the statistical distribution and a predetermined probability level; and identifying segments of the signal envelope that are above the threshold level to thereby identify corresponding segments of the digital audio recording of sounds from the subject as segments of the digital audio recording containing the particular sound events of interest.

Abstract: A method for detecting cough sounds from a sound wave of a subject includes applying features extracted from the sound wave to at least two electronic pattern classifiers including a first classifier trained to detect an explosive phase of a cough and a second classifier trained to detect one or more post-explosive phases of the cough sound. The features extracted from the sound wave are applied to the second classifier after the first classifier has classified features of the sound wave as an explosive phase of a cough sound.