Audio Feature Analysis for Acoustic Pain Detection in Term Newborns

TY - JOUR

T1 - Audio Feature Analysis for Acoustic Pain Detection in Term Newborns

AU - Giordano, Vito

AU - Luister, Alexandra

AU - Reuter, Christoph

AU - Czedik-Eysenberg, Isabella

AU - Singer, Dominique

AU - Steyrl, David

AU - Vettorazzi, Eik

AU - Deindl, Philipp

N1 - © 2022 S. Karger AG, Basel.

PY - 2022/12

Y1 - 2022/12

N2 - INTRODUCTION: Crying newborns signal a need or discomfort as part of the innate communication system. Exposure to pain is related to infants' unfavorable neurodevelopmental outcomes. There is a tremendous need for more objective methods to assess neonatal pain. An audio analysis of acoustic utterances could provide specific information on the patient's pain level.METHODS: We analyzed 67 videos of 33 term-born newborns recorded during a planned capillary blood sample, including the stimuli, non-noxious thermal stimulus, short noxious stimulus, and prolonged unpleasant stimulus, between December 2020 and March 2021. Two expert raters evaluated the infants' pain responses using the Neonatal Facial Coding System (NFCS). The mean values of 123 timbre features of the recorded audio data were analyzed by using specific toolboxes and libraries from the following programming environments: MIRtoolbox (MATLAB), MiningSuite (MATLAB), Essentia (Python), AudioCommons timbral models (Python), and Librosa (Python).RESULTS: The NFCS values were significantly higher during the short noxious stimulus (p < 0.001) and prolonged unpleasant stimulus (p < 0.001) than during the non-noxious thermal stimulus, whereas NFCS values during the short noxious stimulus and prolonged unpleasant stimulus were similar (p = 0.79). Brightness, roughness, percussive energy, and attack times were identified as the features having the highest impact on the NFCS.CONCLUSION: This hypothesis-generating study identified several salient acoustic features highly associated with pain responses in term newborns. Our analysis is an encouraging starting point for the targeted analysis of pain-specific acoustic features of neonatal cries and vocalizations from the perspective of real-time acoustic processing.

AB - INTRODUCTION: Crying newborns signal a need or discomfort as part of the innate communication system. Exposure to pain is related to infants' unfavorable neurodevelopmental outcomes. There is a tremendous need for more objective methods to assess neonatal pain. An audio analysis of acoustic utterances could provide specific information on the patient's pain level.METHODS: We analyzed 67 videos of 33 term-born newborns recorded during a planned capillary blood sample, including the stimuli, non-noxious thermal stimulus, short noxious stimulus, and prolonged unpleasant stimulus, between December 2020 and March 2021. Two expert raters evaluated the infants' pain responses using the Neonatal Facial Coding System (NFCS). The mean values of 123 timbre features of the recorded audio data were analyzed by using specific toolboxes and libraries from the following programming environments: MIRtoolbox (MATLAB), MiningSuite (MATLAB), Essentia (Python), AudioCommons timbral models (Python), and Librosa (Python).RESULTS: The NFCS values were significantly higher during the short noxious stimulus (p < 0.001) and prolonged unpleasant stimulus (p < 0.001) than during the non-noxious thermal stimulus, whereas NFCS values during the short noxious stimulus and prolonged unpleasant stimulus were similar (p = 0.79). Brightness, roughness, percussive energy, and attack times were identified as the features having the highest impact on the NFCS.CONCLUSION: This hypothesis-generating study identified several salient acoustic features highly associated with pain responses in term newborns. Our analysis is an encouraging starting point for the targeted analysis of pain-specific acoustic features of neonatal cries and vocalizations from the perspective of real-time acoustic processing.

U2 - 10.1159/000526209

DO - 10.1159/000526209

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 36116434

VL - 119

SP - 760

EP - 768

JO - NEONATOLOGY

JF - NEONATOLOGY

SN - 1661-7800

IS - 6

ER -