For parents, the baby’s first cry triggers delight. The clear sign of life is the beginning of a lifelong unconscious process – that of independent breathing. Researchers at Med-Uni Graz are trying to classify the acoustics of this signal using AI. In the future, this “sound check” will be used to draw conclusions about the lung function of the newborn. The pilot project has already started.
Analysis of baby voices
The newborn’s cry reflex ensures that part of the exhaled air flows back from the larynx, the amniotic fluid is pressed out of the lungs into the surrounding tissue and finally fresh air can penetrate the lungs. According to the researchers in the Clinical Department of Phoniatrics and the Clinical Department of Obstetrics and Neonatology, even more should be possible with it: “Our vision is that in the future, automatic voice-based recognition will be able to determine the health status of the newborn, especially lung function,” explained project manager Florian Pokorny from the Clinical Department of Phoniatrics.
In a first step, the interdisciplinary project wants to investigate how the acoustics of the first cry and the vocalizations in the first minutes of life differ. The collected acoustic differences are then comprehensively characterized. In further steps, conclusions about lung function should be possible.
ePaper
Read the ePaper now!
Read the daily ePaper edition of the OÖNachrichten – browse through it digitally now!
to the e-paper
info By clicking on the icon you can add the keyword to your topics.
info By clicking on the icon you open your “my topics” page. You have saved 15 tags and need to remove tags.
info By clicking on the icon you can remove the keyword from your topics.
Add the topic to your topics.