title: Combined Use of Standard and Throat Microphones for Measurement of Acoustic Voice Parameters and Voice Categorization.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of the present study was to evaluate the reliability of the measurements of acoustic voice parameters obtained simultaneously using oral and contact (throat) microphones and to investigate utility of combined use of these microphones for voice categorization.
  
  
  METHODS
  Voice samples of sustained vowel /a/ obtained from 157 subjects (105 healthy and 52 pathological voices) were recorded in a soundproof booth simultaneously through two microphones: oral AKG Perception 220 microphone (AKG Acoustics, Vienna, Austria) and contact (throat) Triumph PC microphone (Clearer Communications, Inc, Burnaby, Canada) placed on the lamina of thyroid cartilage. Acoustic voice signal data were measured for fundamental frequency, percent of jitter and shimmer, normalized noise energy, signal-to-noise ratio, and harmonic-to-noise ratio using Dr. Speech software (Tiger Electronics, Seattle, WA).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The correlations of acoustic voice parameters in vocal performance were statistically significant and strong (r = 0.71-1.0) for the entire functional measurements obtained for the two microphones. When classifying into healthy-pathological voice classes, the oral-shimmer revealed the correct classification rate (CCR) of 75.2% and the throat-jitter revealed CCR of 70.7%. However, combination of both throat and oral microphones allowed identifying a set of three voice parameters: throat-signal-to-noise ratio, oral-shimmer, and oral-normalized noise energy, which provided the CCR of 80.3%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The measurements of acoustic voice parameters using a combination of oral and throat microphones showed to be reliable in clinical settings and demonstrated high CCRs when distinguishing the healthy and pathological voice patient groups. Our study validates the suitability of the throat microphone signal for the task of automatic voice analysis for the purpose of voice screening.
authors: Department of Otolaryngology, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania.
authors: Virgilijus
authors: V
authors: Uloza
authors: Department of Otolaryngology, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania. Electronic address: epadervinskis@gmail.com.
authors: Evaldas
authors: E
authors: Padervinskis
authors: Department of Otolaryngology, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania.
authors: Ingrida
authors: I
authors: Uloziene
authors: Department of Physics, Mathematics & Biophysics, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania.
authors: Viktoras
authors: V
authors: Saferis
authors: Department of Electric Power Systems, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania; Department of Intelligent Systems, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden.
authors: Antanas
authors: A
authors: Verikas
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004867:Equipment Design; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014159:Transducers; D014832:Voice Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Acoustic voice parameters; Oral contact microphones; Voice categorization