Objective acoustic analysis of pathological voices from patients with vocal nodules and polyps.
OBJECTIVE
We aim to examine the abilities of objective acoustic analysis methods (nonlinear dynamic and traditional perturbation measures) to describe voices from individuals with vocal nodules and polyps.


METHODS
Sustained vowel recordings from normal subjects, patients with vocal nodules, and patients with vocal polyps were analyzed. Perturbation measures of jitter and shimmer were obtained with the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) and CSpeech. Signal-to-noise ratio was calculated using CSpeech. Nonlinear dynamic measures of phase space reconstruction and correlation dimension were also applied to analyze the voices.


RESULTS
A significant difference between normal and polyp groups was found in jitter and shimmer obtained from MDVP, as well as in jitter and signal-to-noise ratio from CSpeech. However, no parameters significantly differentiated between normal and nodule groups. Shimmer from CSpeech did not reveal any significant differences among any of the groups. Correlation dimension values for the nodule and polyp groups were significantly higher than the normal group.


CONCLUSIONS
Nonlinear dynamic analysis has great potential value for the characterization of voice from patients with vocal nodules and polyps. The combination of traditional perturbation and nonlinear dynamic measures may improve our ability to provide objective clinical analysis of voices with vocal mass lesions.
Department of Surgery, Division of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisc., USA.
Jack J
JJ
Jiang
Yu
Y
Zhang
Julia
J
MacCallum
Alicia
A
Sprecher
Liang
L
Zhou
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007818:Laryngeal Diseases / Q000150:complications*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D010699:Phonation; D010700:Phonetics; D011127:Polyps; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D014832:Voice Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D014833:Voice Quality