Computational medicine in voice research

Abstract

Computer models have been widely used to numerically simulate the physical dynamics of vocal fold oscillation in phonation. Computer simulations have allowed the exploration of a much wider parameter space and a much longer time scale than what would be very costly or sometimes impossible with animal and human models. In the past 10 years, our team uses a combined in vivo, in vitro, and in silico approach to understand the biological mechanism underlying the formation of vocal lesions. The ultimate goal is to identify key biological and physical factors associated with the pathogenesis of and recovery from vocal fold injury that will be useful for personalized voice restoration. Tissue injury and repair is a complex process that involves multiple cells types and molecular signals. We developed 3D agent-based models at a physiological scale to simulate and visualize the cellular and molecular response to vocal injury and treatment. Significant progress has made to improve the model’s computational speed and visualization features using our hybrid CPU-GPU computing platform. Gaps however still exist between the model and the reality. In this talk, I will present what we have achieved so far as well as what challenges we are facing in biological computing.