Vibration pattern recognition using a compressed histogram of oriented gradients for snoring source analysis.

BACKGROUND: Snoring source analysis is essential for an appropriate surgical decision for both simple snorers and obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) patients. OBJECTIVE: As snoring sounds carry significant information about tissue vibrations within the upper airway, a new feature entitled compressed histogram of oriented gradients (CHOG) is proposed to recognize vibration patterns of the snoring source acoustically by compressing histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) descriptors via the multilinear principal component analysis (MPCA) algorithm. METHODS: Each vibration pattern corresponds to a sole or combinatorial vibration among the four upper airway soft tissues of soft palate, lateral pharyngeal wall, tongue base, and epiglottis. 1037 snoring events from noncontact sound recordings of 76 simple snorers or OSAHS patients during drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) were evaluated. RESULTS: With a support vector machine (SVM) as the classifier, the proposed CHOG achieved a recognition accuracy of 89.8% for the seven observable vibration patterns of the snoring source categorized in our most recent work. CONCLUSION: The CHOG outperforms other single features widely used for acoustic analysis of sole vibration site.

Investigation of the Source of Snoring Sound by Drug-Induced Sleep Nasendoscopy.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the source of snoring sound in patients with simple snoring (SS) and different degrees of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) in order to provide a basis for the surgical treatment of snoring. METHODS: Fifty-two patients with either SS or OSAS (with an apnea-hypopnea index ≤40) underwent drug-induced sleep nasendoscopy (DISN). Vibration sites in the pharyngeal cavity were observed. RESULTS: Vibration of the soft palate, pharyngeal lateral wall, epiglottis, and tongue base appeared in 100, 53.8, 42.3, and 26.9% of the patients, respectively. The source of snoring sound was divided into two types: palatal fluttering only (type I) and multisite vibration (type II). The latter was divided into 3 subtypes: palatal fluttering with epiglottis vibration (type IIa), palatal fluttering with lateral wall vibration (type IIb), and palatal fluttering with vibration of the lateral wall, epiglottis, and tongue base together (type IIc). The distribution of type I snoring was the highest in SS patients. Type IIb was more common in patients with medium and severe OSAS. Type IIc was most common in patients with severe OSAS. CONCLUSION: The source of snoring sound is diverse, with SS and OSAS patients showing different features. DISN is a very effective method of identifying the snoring source.

[Association between some factors in maternal pregnancy and childhood asthma with an onset before 3 years of age].

OBJECTIVE: To study the association between some factors in maternal pregnancy and childhood asthma with an onset before 3 years of age, and to provide a basis for the prevention and treatment of childhood asthma and further research on its pathogenesis. METHODS: A retrospective clinical epidemiological study was carried out in 100 children with asthma (age of onset<3 years) and 100 children without allergic disease who were randomly selected as controls. The related information of children and mothers was investigated by questionnaire survey, including general information, medical history, personal and family allergic history, perinatal data, and mothers' health and lifestyle during their pregnancy such as diet, disease, and environmental exposure. The main survey indices were preliminarily analyzed, selected, and assigned, and then the data were subjected to univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: The univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that the fetal sex, history of atopic disease before pregnancy, history of respiratory infection in pregnancy, and the intake of fish, shrimp, crab, meat and spicy food in pregnancy were significantly associated with childhood asthma with an onset before 3 years of age, with odds ratios of 2.868, 5.051, 4.640, 3.746, 2.971, 3.075, and 2.225, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Many factors in maternal pregnancy are associated with childhood asthma with an onset before 3 years of age, and the risk of which can be reduced by the prevention of respiratory infection and appropriate diet in pregnancy.

[Effects of nasal cavity enlarging surgery on snoring in obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome patients].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the efficacies of nasal cavity enlarging surgery in obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) patients with nasal obstruction. METHODS: From April 2011 to October 2012, a total of 22 OSAHS patient with nasal obstruction underwent nasal cavity enlargement. Natural overnight snoring was digitally recorded, polysomnography (PSG) performed simultaneously and nasal resistance measured at pre- and post-operation. Body mass index (BMI), Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), minimum oxygen saturation SaO2, total nasal resistance, peak frequency, maximal frequency, mean frequency, central frequency and power ratio 800 Hz of snores were recorded and compared. RESULTS: BMI and SaO2 rose while AHI and ESS declined post-operatively. No statistical difference existed between pre-operation and post-operation. The total nasal resistance was (0.39 ± 0.15) and (0.29 ± 0.11) Pa·cm(-3)·s(-1) at pre- and post-operation. And there was significant statistical difference (P < 0.01) . The snores at pre- and post-operation exhibited different patterns in time and power spectrum distribution domains. And fmax, fpeak and fmean declined while fc and PR800 rose at post-operation. Significant statistical differences existed in the change of fpeak and PR800 at pre- and post-operation (P < 0.01) . CONCLUSION: Nasal cavity enlargement can lessen nasal resistance and change the acoustic characteristics of snoring in OSAHS patients. The postoperative snoring focus of lower frequency suggests that acoustic parameters of snores may be used to evaluate the efficacy of OSAHS surgery.

[Cisplatin-induced apoptotic cell death in spiral ganglion and organ of Corti of mongolian gerbil cochlear].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether apoptosis is one of the mechanism for cell death in spiral ganglion(SG) and organ of Corti of Mongolian gerbils cochlea induced by cisplatin. METHODS: Mongolian gerbils were administered 4 mg.kg-1.d-1 cisplatin consecutively for 4 to 7 days. The apoptotic cell death in spiral ganglion and organ of Corti of cochlea basal turn was detected via transmission electron microscopy and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) method. RESULTS: The observation of electron microscopy shown special morphological change consistent with the feature of cell apoptosis in some spiral ganglion cells and outer hair cells after 5-7 days' cisplatin treatment. The apoptotic labeling by TUNEL in spiral ganglion and organ of Corti was detected after 5 days' treatment and increased after 6 and 7 days' treatment whereas almost negative result were obtained in the normal control animals. CONCLUSION: Apoptosis is one of the important mechanisms for cell injury of spiral ganglion and organ of Corti induced by cisplatin.