Sound Analysis System of Newborn Cry during Blood Draw with Cerebral Oximetry Monitoring

Abstract

Newborns’ cry is one of the few signals that can be obtained without invasive tests. Latest studies performed mostly in the last 25 years show that through feature extraction from the cry signal relevant information can be found in order to classify different pathologies such as asphyxia, hypothyroidism, hypoxia, autism or other disorders. The study of pain cries has even a longer history, due to the fact that it clearly states an inner suffering that the newborn is vocalizing in his language which must be decoded and given a medical meaning. In order to perform the studies on the newborn cry, besides the cry signal in some researches medical instruments have been also utilized in order to correlate between physiological parameters and some cry features. In this study, cerebral oxygenation was measured during routine blood draws from the scalp, arm or heel while also recording the pain cries. The goal of this study was to analyze the cry signal while performing these common tests in order to compare the fluctuations of the cerebral oxygenation with features from the cry signal. An e-Health platform is proposed in order to carry out the study across multiple hospitals, which have the required medical equipment used to gather information about the cerebral oxygenation of the newborn at blood draw.