Tamer A. Mesallam

Formant analysis in dysphonic patients and automatic Arabic digit speech recognition

Background and objectiveThere has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in dysphonic patients for the classification of the type and severity of voice pathologies using automatic speech recognition (ASR). The aim of this work was to study the accuracy of the conventional ASR system (with Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) based front end and hidden Markov model (HMM) based back end) in recognizing the speech characteristics of people with pathological voice.Materials and methodsThe speech samples of 62 dysphonic patients with six different types of voice disorders and 50 normal subjects were analyzed. The Arabic spoken digits were taken as an input. The distribution of the first four formants of the vowel /a/ was extracted to examine deviation of the formants from normal.ResultsThere was 100% recognition accuracy obtained for Arabic digits spoken by normal speakers. However, there was a significant loss of accuracy in the classifications while spoken by voice disordered subjects. Moreover, no significant improvement in ASR performance was achieved after assessing a subset of the individuals with disordered voices who underwent treatment.ConclusionThe results of this study revealed that the current ASR technique is not a reliable tool in recognizing the speech of dysphonic patients.

An Investigation of Multidimensional Voice Program Parameters in Three Different Databases for Voice Pathology Detection and Classification

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Automatic voice-pathology detection and classification systems may help clinicians to detect the existence of any voice pathologies and the type of pathology from which patients suffer in the early stages. The main aim of this paper is to investigate Multidimensional Voice Program (MDVP) parameters to automatically detect and classify the voice pathologies in multiple databases, and then to find out which parameters performed well in these two processes. MATERIALS AND METHODS Samples of the sustained vowel /a/ of normal and pathological voices were extracted from three different databases, which have three voice pathologies in common. The selected databases in this study represent three distinct languages: (1) the Arabic voice pathology database; (2) the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary database (English database); and (3) the Saarbruecken Voice Database (German database). A computerized speech lab program was used to extract MDVP parameters as features, and an acoustical analysis was performed. The Fisher discrimination ratio was applied to rank the parameters. A t test was performed to highlight any significant differences in the means of the normal and pathological samples. RESULTS The experimental results demonstrate a clear difference in the performance of the MDVP parameters using these databases. The highly ranked parameters also differed from one database to another. The best accuracies were obtained by using the three highest ranked MDVP parameters arranged according to the Fisher discrimination ratio: these accuracies were 99.68%, 88.21%, and 72.53% for the Saarbruecken Voice Database, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary database, and the Arabic voice pathology database, respectively.

Development of the Arabic Version of Reflux Symptom Index

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Reflux Symptom Index (RSI), is a nine-item self-administered questionnaire. It is a noninvasive tool with the purpose of assessing the symptoms of laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR). The purposes of the present study were to develop an Arabic version of the RSI and to evaluate its validity, consistency, and reliability in normal Arabic population with suspected LPR. SETTING AND DESIGN This is a prospective study that has been carried out at Communication and Swallowing Disorders Unit, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The generated Arabic RSI was administered to 52 patients with suspected LPR and to 100 control subjects. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were evaluated. The results of the patients and the control groups were compared. RESULTS The Arabic RSI showed satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbachs α=.72). Also, good test-retest reliability was found for the total scores of the Arabic RSI (r=0.9799, P=0.001). There was a significant difference between RSI scores of the control and the LPR group (P<0.001). CONCLUSION This study demonstrated that Arabic RSI is a valid tool for self-assessment of LPR that can be used by Arabic language speakers.

Vocal fold disorder detection based on continuous speech by using MFCC and GMM

Vocal fold voice disorder detection with a sustained vowel is well investigated by research community during recent years. The detection of voice disorder with a sustained vowel is a comparatively easier task than detection with continuous speech. The speech signal remains stationary in case of sustained vowel but it varies over time in continuous time. This is the reason; voice detection by using continuous speech is challenging and demands more investigation. Moreover, detection with continuous speech is more realistic because people use it in their daily conversation but sustained vowel is not used in everyday talks. An accurate voice assessment can provide unique and complementary information for the diagnosis, and can be used in the treatment plan. In this paper, vocal fold disorders, cyst, polyp, nodules, paralysis, and sulcus, are detected using continuous speech. Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) are used with Gaussian mixture model (GMM) to build an automatic detection system capable of differentiating normal and pathological voices. The detection rate of the developed detection system with continuous speech is 91.66%.

Automatic Arabic digit speech recognition and formant analysis for voicing disordered people

In this paper, analysis of speech from voice disordered people is performed from automatic speech recognition (ASR) point of view. Six different types of voicing disorder (pathological voice) are analyzed to show the difficulty of automatically recognizing their corresponding speech. As a case study, Arabic spoken digits are taken as input. The distribution of first four formants of vowel /a/ is extracted to show a significant deviation of formants from the normal speech to disordered speech. Experiment result reveals that current ASR technique is far from reliable performance in case of pathological speech, and thereby we need attention to this.

Medialization Thyroplasty Using Autologous Nasal Septal Cartilage for Treating Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis

Objectives A persistent insufficiency of glottal closure is mostly a consequence of impaired unilateral vocal fold movement. Functional surgical treatment is required because of the consequential voice, breathing and swallowing impairments. The goal of the study was to determine the functional voice outcomes after medialization thyroplasty with using autologous septal cartilage from the nose. Methods External vocal fold medialization using autologous nasal septal cartilage was performed on 15 patients (6 females and 9 males; age range, 30 to 57 years). Detailed functional examinations were performed for all the patients before and after the surgery and this included perceptual voice assessment, laryngostroboscopic examination and acoustic voice analysis. Results All the patients reported improvement of voice quality post-operatively. Laryngostroboscopy revealed almost complete glottal closure after surgery in the majority of patients. Acoustic and perceptual voice assessment showed significant improvement post-operatively. Conclusion Medialization thyroplasty using an autologous nasal septal cartilage implant offers good tissue tolerability and significant improvement of the subjective and objective functional voice outcomes.

The effect of cochlear implantation and post-operative rehabilitation on acoustic voice analysis in post-lingual hearing impaired adults.

Post-lingual deaf adults can develop some vocal abnormalities similar to those developed in pre-lingual deaf individuals. The aim of this work was to study the effect of cochlear implantation followed by post-operative rehabilitation on voice acoustics in post-lingual hearing impaired adults with different durations of hearing loss. The study included 35 post-lingual hearing impaired adults who underwent cochlear implantation. Patients were divided into two groups according to the duration of their hearing loss. Each group was further divided into two subgroups according to whether they received auditory rehabilitation or not. Using the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) parameters, comparisons were made between each subgroup of patients and the normal MDVP Saudi database, and between subgroups of patients. Most of the patients in the two groups reported significant improvement in their MDVP results post-implantation. Further, significantly deviant MDVP parameters were reported in the group of patients with longer duration of hearing loss. Patients who received rehabilitation significantly improved more than those who did not. In conclusion, it appears that cochlear implantation improves the auditory control of voice production in post-lingual deaf adults. Also, it is obvious that cochlear implantation at an early stage of hearing loss gives better results on voice control, especially if augmented with auditory rehabilitation.

Standardization of nasalance scores in normal Saudi speakers

Abstract Objective. The aims of this study were to obtain normative nasalance scores for a normal Saudi population with different ages and genders, to develop nasometric Arabic speech materials, and to make cross-linguistic comparison. Subjects. Participants included 219 normal Saudi native monolingual Arabic speakers of different ages. Subjects were classified into four groups according to age and gender. Subjects did not have any history of oral, nasal, or velopharyngeal abnormality. Methods. Arabic speech samples were developed to evaluate nasalance scores, which included syllables repetition, three oral sentences, three oro-nasal sentences, and three nasal sentences. Nasalance data were obtained using Nasometer II–6400. Results. Normative nasalance values were determined. Significant differences between the male and female children groups were noticed in many parameters. Nasalance scores were higher in adults, with significant differences between all groups. Conclusion. Normative nasalance scores for Saudi Arabic speakers have been developed for both adults and children. The Arabic speech materials developed in this study appear to be easy to use and applicable for different age groups.

Voice Pathology Detection and Classification Using Auto-Correlation and Entropy Features in Different Frequency Regions

Automatic voice pathology detection and classification systems effectively contribute to the assessment of voice disorders, enabling the early detection of voice pathologies and the diagnosis of the type of pathology from which patients suffer. This paper concentrates on developing an accurate and robust feature extraction for detecting and classifying voice pathologies by investigating different frequency bands using autocorrelation and entropy. We extracted maximum peak values and their corresponding lag values from each frame of a voiced signal by using autocorrelation as features to detect and classify pathological samples. We also extracted the entropy for each frame of the voice signal after we normalized its values to be used as the features. These features were investigated in distinct frequency bands to assess the contribution of each band to the detection and classification processes. Various samples of the sustained vowel /a/ for both normal and pathological voices were extracted from three different databases in English, German, and Arabic. A support vector machine was used as a classifier. We also performed u-tests to investigate if there is a significant difference between the means of the normal and pathological samples. The best achieved accuracies in both detection and classification varied depending on the used band, method, and database. The most contributive bands in both detection and classification were between 1000 and 8000 Hz. The highest obtained accuracies in the case of detection were 99.69%, 92.79%, and 99.79% for Massachusetts eye and ear infirmary (MEEI), Saarbrücken voice database (SVD), and Arabic voice pathology database (AVPD), respectively. However, the highest achieved accuracies for classification were 99.54%, 99.53%, and 96.02% for MEEI, SVD, and AVPD, correspondingly, using the combined feature.

The Effect of Cochlear Implantation on Nasalance of Speech in Postlingually Hearing-Impaired Adults

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Hypernasality is considered a prevalent speech abnormality that could significantly contribute to the unintelligibility of the hearing-impaired speakers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of cochlear implantation and the duration of hearing loss on nasalance of speech of a postlingually impaired group of Saudi adult patients. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective study. METHODS This study included 25 postlingually hearing-impaired patients who underwent cochlear implantation and 25 age-matched control subjects. Patients were divided into three groups according to the duration of hearing loss. The nasometric data of the hearing-impaired group were compared with the control group. Also, the preoperative values were compared with the postoperative values 6, 12, and 24 months after surgery. RESULTS Significant differences were demonstrated between the preimplantation nasalance scores of the three subgroups and between the patients and control groups. There were statistically significant differences demonstrated between the pre- and the postimplantation nasalance values for the three groups of patients. CONCLUSION Cochlear implantation appears to have significant effects on improving the nasalance of the speech of postlingually hearing-impaired adult patients. However, the degree of improvement might vary according to the duration of hearing loss the patients had preimplantation.