The infant cry has received strong research interest from scientists, medical doctors and
engineers for a number of decades. As an infant's primary vehicle for communication, it is believed
that the cry contains valuable information of the infant's physical and emotional well-being. As a
result, the cry has been proposed as a useful means for monitoring an infant's level of distress
(LOD).
Recently, a novel approach for estimating the LOD has been introduced based on the proven
concept of the cry being composed of recognizable cry-words. Using an established set of ten crywords,
a single value indication of an infant's LOD is obtainable called the H-value. Previous
methods for demonstrating the usefulness of this measure required complex algorithms and a
complete tool was not developed.
In this thesis the development of such a desirable tool is reported. This tool uses no single
recognition technique but rather an eclectic variety of correlation methods and simple decision rules
in conjunction with common features and techniques such as the fundamental frequency, FFT,
short-time energy and a modified power spectral density. Without computationally intensive
routines, the complexity of the system was reduced from previous methods resulting in a practical
cry research tool.
Testing of this system made use of actual cry data. Comparisons are given with previous
systems and experienced parents' LOD ratings. The tool was also implemented on both a SUN and
a PC to demonstrate the portability of the tool between different systems. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/6322 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Black, John Scott |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 7654514 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds