Characterization of the Pathological Voices (Dysphonia) in the frequency space

International audienceThis paper is related to the dysphonic voice assessment. It aims at studying the characteristic of dysphonia on the frequency domain. In this context, a GMM based automatic classication system is coupled to a frequency subband architecture in order to investigate which frequency bands are relevant for dysphonia characterization. Through various experiments, the low frequencies [0- 3000] Hz tend to be more interesting for dysphonia discrimination compared with higher frequencies

Validity and reliability of the 2nd European Portuguese version of the “Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice” (II EP CAPE-V)

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master in Science at the Health Science School of Polytechnic Institute of SetúbalIntroduction: Auditory-perceptual evaluation of voice is a part of a multidimensional voice evaluation, and is claimed to be “golden standard”. The “Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice” (CAPE-V) has been demonstrated to be a valid and reliable instrument for voice evaluation, when applied in both clinical and scientific research fields. The CAPE-V was first translated into European Portuguese (EP) (Jesus et al., 2009) however it revealed some validity and reliability problems. The purpose of this study was to assure a valid and reliable EP version of CAPE-V. This resulted in the 2nd EP version of CAPE-V (II EP CAPE-V), with permission granted by ASHA. Method: This was a transversal, observational, descriptive, and comparative study. 14 Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) voice experts (>5 years of clinical practice), rated a total of 26 voice samples produced by 10 males (mean age=45) and 10 females (mean age=43) classified into two groups: a control group (n=10) and a dysphonic group (n=10), with subjects matched for age and gender. All voice samples were rated in one session with the II EP CAPE-V, and in a second session one week later with GRBAS. Content validity was supported by 6 new sentences conceptualized and adapted to EP linguistic and cultural context according to the rationale outlined in the original CAPE-V protocol. For construct validity analysis, an independent samples t-test (α=.05) was performed for all vocal parameter. Concurrent validity was estimated with the multi-serial correlation coefficient between II EP CAPE-V and GRBAS parameters (r>.70). Reliability was performed for all vocal parameters. Inter-rater reliability was determined by ICC, and intra-rater reliability by Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r>.70). Results/conclusion: Content validity was assured by an EP linguistic expert, who reviewed the six new sentences. Construct validity was obtained for all voical parameters (p.89) for overall severity/grade, roughness, and breathiness parameters. High inter-rater reliability (ICC>.84) was obtained for all parameters. Intra-rater reliability was high (r>.87) for overall severity, breathiness, and pitch; good (r=.73) for strain; and moderate (r>.69) for roughness and loudness parameters. The II EP CAPE-V is a valid and reliable instrument for auditory-perceptual evaluation, with all psychometric characteristics established

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The MAVEBA Workshop proceedings, held on a biannual basis, collect the scientific papers presented both as oral and poster contributions, during the conference. The main subjects are: development of theoretical and mechanical models as an aid to the study of main phonatory dysfunctions, as well as the biomedical engineering methods for the analysis of voice signals and images, as a support to clinical diagnosis and classification of vocal pathologies

Investigation of Voice Pathology Detection and Classification on Different Frequency Regions Using Correlation Functions.

Automatic voice pathology detection and classification systems effectively contribute to the assessment of voice disorders, which helps clinicians to detect the existence of any voice pathologies and the type of pathology from which patients suffer in the early stages. This work concentrates on developing an accurate and robust feature extraction for detecting and classifying voice pathologies by investigating different frequency bands using correlation functions. In this paper, we extracted maximum peak values and their corresponding lag values from each frame of a voiced signal by using correlation functions as features to detect and classify pathological samples. These features are investigated in different frequency bands to see the contribution of each band on the detection and classification processes.Various samples of sustained vowel /a/ of normal and pathological voices were extracted from three different databases: English, German, and Arabic. A support vector machine was used as a classifier. We also performed a t test to investigate the significant differences in mean of normal and pathological samples.The best achieved accuracies in both detection and classification were varied depending on the band, the correlation function, and the database. The most contributive bands in both detection and classification were between 1000 and 8000 Hz. In detection, the highest acquired accuracies when using cross-correlation were 99.809%, 90.979%, and 91.168% in the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Saarbruecken Voice Database, and Arabic Voice Pathology Database databases, respectively. However, in classification, the highest acquired accuracies when using cross-correlation were 99.255%, 98.941%, and 95.188% in the three databases, respectively

SPECTRAL/CEPSTRAL ANALYSIS OF VOICE QUALITY IN PATIENTS WITH PARKINSONS DISEASE

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine whether Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) affects cepstral/spectral measures of voice quality in speakers with idiopathic Parkinsons Disease (PD). The first study investigated the effect of LSVT on cepstral/spectral measures of sustained // vowels to determine whether voice quality improves. Few studies have investigated the effects of LSVT on voice quality using acoustic measures, and none have used cepstral measures. The first study investigated the effect of LSVT on cepstral/spectral analyses of sustained // vowels produced by speakers. Sustained vowels were analyzed for cepstral peak prominence (CPP), CPP Standard Deviation (CPP-SD), Low/High Spectral Ratio (L/H SR), and Cepstral/Spectral Index of Dysphonia (CSID) using the Analysis of Dysphonia in Speech and Voice (ADSV) program. The study found both improved harmonic structure and voice quality as reflected in cepstral/spectral measures. Voice quality in connected speech is important because it is representative of how a typical individual communicates. Thus, the second studys goals were: First, to investigate the effect of LSVT on cepstral/spectral analysis of connected speech; and second, to compare cepstral/spectral analyses findings in connected speech with findings observed in sustained phonation. Another goal was to examine individual differences in response to treatment and compare them to individual changes observed in sustained phonation. The results demonstrated that CPP increased significantly following LSVT, indicating improved harmonic dominance as a result of treatment, and CSID decreased following LSVT, indicating a reduction of the overall severity in connected speech at the group level. Analysis of individual differences demonstrated that only four participants improved by at least one half Standard Deviation (SD) following treatment in CPP, CPP-SD, and CSID in both sustained phonation and connected speech tasks. Three showed a reduction in L/H SR in sustained phonation and only one showed an increase in L/H SR in connected speech. The other participants improvement varied, but the majority demonstrated voice quality improvement in sustained phonation. The overall results indicated that CPP and CSID were strong acoustic measures for demonstrating voice quality improvement following treatment in both tasks connected speech and sustained phonation

Cepstral Peak Prominence Smoothed distribution as discriminator of vocal health in sustained vowel

This paper focuses on Cepstral Peak Prominence Smoothed (CPPS) as a possible indicator of vocal health status, considering individual CPPS distribution and its descriptive statistics. 31 voluntary patients and 22 control subjects performed the same protocol, which includes the simultaneous acquisition of three repetitions of the sustained vowel /a/ with a microphone in air and a contact sensor, the perceptual assessment of voice and the videolaringoscopy examination. The best logistic regression models have been applied and preliminary results showed that the fifth percentile and the standard deviation of CPPS distributions are the best parameters that discriminate healthy and unhealthy voice for the microphone in air and the contact sensor, respectively. The Area Under Curve (AUC) revealed the diagnostic precision of the selected CPPS parameters: AUC of 0.96 and 0.83 have been found for the microphone in air and the contact sensor, showing strong to moderate discrimination power, respectively. The repeatability of the selected CPPS parameters has been also estimated. For each selected CPPS parameter, the Monte Carlo method has been implemented in order to evaluate the uncertainty of the threshold, which was identified by means of the Receiver Operating Curve analysis

Analysis of complexity and modulation spectra parameterizations to characterize voice roughness

Disordered voices are frequently assessed by speech pathologists using acoustic perceptual evaluations. This might lead to problems due to the subjective nature of the process and due to the in uence of external factors which compromise the quality of the assessment. In order to increase the reliability of the evaluations the design of new indicator parameters obtained from voice signal processing is desirable. With that in mind, this paper presents an automatic evaluation system which emulates perceptual assessments of the roughness level in human voice. Two parameterization methods are used: complexity, which has already been used successfully in previous works, and modulation spectra. For the latter, a new group of parameters has been proposed as Low Modulation Ratio (LMR), Contrast (MSW) and Homogeneity (MSH). The tested methodology also employs PCA and LDA to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space, and GMM classiffers for evaluating the ability of the proposed features on distinguishing the different roughness levels. An effciency of 82% and a Cohen's Kappa Index of 0:73 is obtained using the modulation spectra parameters, while the complexity parameters performed 73% and 0:58 respectively. The obtained results indicate the usefulness of the proposed modulation spectra features for the automatic evaluation of voice roughness which can derive in new parameters to be useful for clinicians

Do We Get What We Need from Clinical Acoustic Voice Measurements?

Instrumental acoustic measurements of the human voice have enormous potential to objectively describe pathology and, thereby, to assist clinical treatment decisions. Despite the increasing application and accessibility of technical knowledge and equipment, recent research has highlighted a lack of understanding of physiologic, speech/language-, and culture-related influencing factors. This article presents a critical review of the current state of the art in the clinical application of instrumental acoustic voice quality measurements and points out future directions for improving its applications and dissemination in less privileged populations. The main barriers to this research relate to (a) standardization and reporting of acoustic analysis techniques; (b) understanding of the relation between perceptual and instrumental acoustic results; (c) the necessity to account for natural speech-related covariables, such as differences in speaking voice sound pressure level (SPL) and fundamental frequency f0; (d) the need for a much larger database to understand normal variability within and between voice-disordered and vocally healthy individuals related to age, training, and physiologic factors; and (e) affordable equipment, including mobile communication devices, accessible in various settings. This calls for further research into technical developments and optimal assessment procedures for pathology-specific patient groups

It Sounds like It Feels: Preliminary Exploration of an Aeroacoustic Diagnostic Protocol for Singers

To date, no established protocol exists for measuring functional voice changes in singers with subclinical singing-voice complaints. Hence, these may go undiagnosed until they progress into greater severity. This exploratory study sought to (1) determine which scale items in the self-perceptual Evaluation of Ability to Sing Easily (EASE) are associated with instrumental voice measures, and (2) construct as proof-of-concept an instrumental index related to singers’ perceptions of their vocal function and health status. Eighteen classical singers were acoustically recorded in a controlled environment singing an /a/ vowel using soft phonation. Aerodynamic data were collected during a softly sung /papapapapapapa/ task with the KayPENTAX Phonatory Aerodynamic System. Using multi and univariate linear regression techniques, CPPS, vibrato jitter, vibrato shimmer, and an efficiency ratio (SPL/PSub) were included in a significant model (p < 0.001) explaining 62.4% of variance in participants’ composite scores of three scale items related to vocal fatigue. The instrumental index showed a significant association (p = 0.001) with the EASE vocal fatigue subscale overall. Findings illustrate that an aeroacoustic instrumental index may be useful for monitoring functional changes in the singing voice as part of a multidimensional diagnostic approach to preventative and rehabilitative voice healthcare for professional singing-voice users