R\'enyi Information Measures for Spectral Change Detection

TL;DR

This paper introduces two novel spectral change detection methods using Rényi entropies applied to spectrograms, offering refined, low-cost analysis without assumptions on input sound, useful for various audio processing tasks.

Contribution

The paper proposes two new spectral change detection techniques based on Rényi entropies, extending traditional measures for improved accuracy and flexibility in audio analysis.

Findings

Effective detection of spectral changes in audio streams.

Low computational complexity of proposed methods.

Suitable for integration into higher-level audio analysis systems.

Abstract

Change detection within an audio stream is an important task in several domains, such as classification and segmentation of a sound or of a music piece, as well as indexing of broadcast news or surveillance applications. In this paper we propose two novel methods for spectral change detection without any assumption about the input sound: they are both based on the evaluation of information measures applied to a time- frequency representation of the signal, and in particular to the spectrogram. The class of measures we consider, the R\'enyi entropies, are obtained by extending the Shannon entropy definition: a biasing of the spectrogram coefficients is realized through the dependence of such measures on a parameter, which allows refined results compared to those obtained with standard divergences. These methods provide a low computational cost and are well-suited as a support for higher level analysis, segmentation and classification algorithms.