Soon, detectors to identify sick travelers

London, Jan 30 (ANI): Worried about catching an infection while on flight with a sick person? Well, Belgium researchers seem to have put an end to your agony.

The team from Biorics, a spinout company from the University of Leuven in Belgium has come up with a novel way to identify passengers who may be infected with a pandemic virus - only from the sound of their coughing.

They revealed that installing microphones in areas like a departure lounge would help detect and diagnose different kinds of coughs, reports New Scientist.

The microphone output would be constantly processed to eradicate background hubbub to reveal the sound spikes of coughs, or "bioresponses".

Later the sound classification algorithms would help identify whether the noise is a harmless throat clearing or a "productive" cough that may signal infection.

Moreover, the loudness of a cough in different microphones would also make it spot the location of the infected person.

Previous studies have revealed that it is possible to develop a software that can discriminate between different kinds of cough or to spot illness.

"Governments and national or private health agencies can use this information from several users to gain information about the spread of respiratory disease," the patent claims. (ANI)