Amaia Méndez

Tennis computer game with brain control using EEG signals

This paper presents a game designed to improve the quality of life of people with severe disabilities for using a computer mouse or keyboard. The game has been designed using biofeedback and BCI technology included in a machine learning algorithm and integrated into a game interface using the SDL library. The results have been entirely satisfactory because the success rate in trained patients is over the 80% and the game has been qualified by them as friendly. Next step will be to develop the graphics in 3D instead of 2D. The social benefits of this type of application can affect diseases involving movement difficulties for controlling keyboard and mouse of a computer, or even rare diseases like congenital double athetosis.

Oesophageal speech enhancement using poles stabilization and Kalman filtering

This paper presents an oesophageal speech enhancement algorithm. Such an exceptionally special type of voice is due to the laryngectomy undergone by those persons with larynx cancer. An oesophageal voice has extremely low intelligibility. This work proposes a method to improve its quality, which consists of stabilizing the transfer function poles of the vocal tract model so as to improve a signals fornants. With this aim, the joint use of two techniques has been applied: on the one hand, an algorithm that transforms the modulus and phase of vocal tracts poles and, on the other hand, a Kalman filtering technique. When using this efficient speech enhancement procedure, the speech signal is usually modelled as an autoregressive (AR) process and represented in the state- space domain. The final speech improvement has been measured with the help of MDVP tools and the HNR parameter.

Serious games and Health Informatics: A unified framework

Serious games have been expanding to include diagnostic and therapeutic applications. At the same time Health Informatics and health information systems are getting more attention and usage. Integrating serious games for health with Health information systems is a necessity to create a more effective user experience and health outcomes. This paper provides an overview of main components of each domain and proposes a unified approach for integration.

Glottal space segmentation from motion estimation and gabor filtering

Obtaining the glottal space segmentation is essential to characterize morphological disorders of vocal folds. In this study, the tested images are been acquired by direct optical inspection of the glottis using an endoscope and most of them are very poor quality. The application of motion estimation is very useful to segment the vocal folds endoscopic videos without user interaction. This approach involves three process steps: 1) Wiener motion estimator - to shift the measurement the next frame regarding to the current frame, and look for similarities between them. The best matching will accurate a shift equal to the displacement vector of the object; 2) Segmentation using motion estimation results and applying Gabor filtering; 3) Experimental results to demonstrate that the proposed method is effective. Our proposal works correctly with 95% of database test videos and it shows a great advance in design, and in the nearby future, a complete method to diagnose vocal folds pathologies.

Keyframes detection and analysis in vocal folds recordings using hierarchical motion techniques and texture information

This paper presents the study of vocal videostroboscopic videos to detect morphological pathologies using a combination of motion information and segmentation. The motion permits us to obtain the keyframes of total (or minimum) closure and maximum opening and to have the initialization for the segmentation process. The segmentation is made analyzing the image textures applying Gabor filtering. After this stage, where the pathology is (if it exists) is delimited using derivative techniques and interpolation. Finally, the pathology is localized and we can extract some features of each fold.

EasySP: The Easiest form to Learn Signal Processing Interactively

This paper describes an educational tool to facilitate the study of digital signal processing. This application offers a GUI support for integrating signal processing demos, using plugins that execute Octave/Matlab functions. On the one hand, this application permits students to change parameters for several examples, classified in categories such as modulations, filter design, speech and image signals analysis and processing. On the other hand, it offers the possibility of easily implementing two kinds of new signal processing plugins, XML based and Java based.

Oesophageal Speech’s Formants Measurement Using Wavelet Transform

Our research group has presented many works to the scientific community [2], [3], aimed to the improvement of esophageal speech quality by stabilizing the poles of the system which models the vocal tract with LPC. Nowadays the wavelet transform is being used in order to enhance the Harmonics to noise ratio. For this task, it is crucial to know accurately the frequency values of formants in vowels [7].

Objective model of vocal folds, based on glottal closure, opening angles and morphologic criteria

This paper presents the work carried out on the modelling of vocal folds and the extraction of objective parameters which help the specialist to express a diagnosis based on something more robust than the observation of medical images. This study is specifically focused on measuring the glottal closure and opening angles in diverse pathologies. Therefore, different image signal processing techniques are used which provide the necessary tools for the implementation of an automated diagnosis software.

MultiPAS: JAVA, C++ and C# to Octave bridges

This proposal introduces the APIs developed by PAS research group from the University of Deusto (UD) to signal processing learners three gateways between the main programming languages (Java, C++ and C#) and “Octave” mathematical software. These APIS enable the use of “Octave” variables and functions through a JAVA- C++- C# program and makes it possible to not only develop signal processing applications quickly by implementing the applications graphic interfaces but also to carry out the scientific calculation in “Octave”. These gateways are developed with the shape of API, and have been made available to students doing degrees in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering, so as to assist them in their lab training in signal processing, as well as for the drafting of their final projects. They are very useful to research developments as well, not to rewrite existing code. Finally, it is important to stress the free-software nature of the developed gateways: as no license is necessary, student access to this program of scientific calculus is easier.

BIOHOME: A House Designed for Assisted Living

This work in progress describes an integral solution to implement a module-based platform for the control of all the automated systems inside a house. This project is based on the development of a biometrical access control system made by PAS Group in the University of Deusto. The major aim of this work is to develop an accessible way to control a house by the TV. By using the remote control, the clients will manage their houses. Also, it provides global autonomy to the disabled people, especially the old aged people. This will be made by knowing the physical restrictions of the collective who will live in the house. A set of different sensors will control this operation. In order to control all the home automated systems and coordinate the whole platform, this project will implement the OSGI standard. This implementation must ensure the system scalability in terms of enclosing new hardware. Also, it will be developed a ZibBee networking system to allow the communication between all the sensors, the systems and the central processor.