Lung sounds auscultation is often the first noninvasive resource for detection and discrimination of respiratory pathologies available to the physician through the use of the stethoscope. Hearing interpretation, though, was the only means of appreciation of the lung sounds diagnostic information for many decades. Nevertheless, in recent years, computerized auscultation combined with signal processing techniques has boosted the diagnostic capabilities of lung sounds. The latter were traditionally analyzed and characterized by morphological changes in the time domain using statistical measures, by spectral properties in the frequency domain using simple spectral analysis, or by nonstationary properties in a joint time-frequency domain using short-time Fourier transform. Advanced signal processing techniques, however, have emerged in the last decade, broadening the perspective in lung sounds analysis. The scope of this book is to present up-to-date signal processing techniques that have been applied to the area of lung sound analysis. It starts with a description of the nature of lung sounds and continues with the introduction of new domains in their representation, new denoising techniques, and concludes with some reflective implications, both from engineers' and physicians' perspective. Issues of nonstationarity, nonlinearity, non-Gaussianity, modeling, and classification of lung sounds are addressed with new methodologies, revealing a more realistic approach to their pragmatic nature. Advanced denoising techniques that effectively circumvent the noise presence (e.g., heart sound interference, background noise) in lung sound recordings are described, providing the physician with high-quality auscultative data. The book offers useful information both to engineers and physicians interested in bioacoustics, clearly demonstrating the current trends in lung sound analysis. Table of Contents: The Nature of Lung Sound Signals / New Domains in LS Representation / Denoising Techniques / Reflective Implications

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Leontios J. Hadjileontiadis was born in Kastoria, Greece, in 1966. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1989 and Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1997, both from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece. In December 1999, he began his stint as a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, AUTh, where he is currently an assistant professor, working on lung sounds, heart sounds, bowel sounds, electrocardiogram data compression, seismic data analysis, and crack detection in the Signal Processing and Biomedical Technology Unit of the university's Telecommunications Laboratory. His research interests are centered on higher-order statistics, a-stable distributions, higher-order zero crossings, wavelets, polyspectra, fractals, neurofuzzy modeling for medical, mobile, and digital signal processing applications. Dr. Hadjileontiadis is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece, the IEEE, the Higher-Order Statistics Society, the International Lung Sounds Association (Secretary), and the American College of Chest Physicians. He won 2nd place in the Best Paper Competition of the 9th Panhellenic Medical Conference on Thorax Diseases '97, Thessaloniki. He was also an open finalist at the Student paper Competition (Whitaker Foundation) of the IEEE EMBS '97, Chicago, IL; a finalist at the Student Paper Competition (in memory of Dick Poortvliet) of the MEDICON '98, Lemesos, Cyprus; the recipient of the Young Scientist Award of the 24th International Lung Sounds Conference '99, Marburg, Germany; and the recipient of the 2nd Innovation Award, Research Committee, AUTh, 2008. In 2004, 2005, and 2007, he organized and served as a mentor to three 5-student teams that have won international awards at the Imagine Cup Competition (Microsoft) in Sao Paulo (2004), Yokohama (2005), and Seoul (2007), respectively, with projects relating to assistive technology for disabled people (blind, deaf, autistickids). Dr. Hadjileontiadis also holds a Ph.D. degree in music composition (University of York, UK, 2004) and he is currently a Professor in composition at the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki, Greece.