Abstract
The development of computer software and other technologies greatly facilitates the evaluation of pathological voice patients. This fact allows to reduce exploration time, improves the reproducibility of results and creates the possibility of test protocol standardization needed for the intercommunication between the different voice specialists. The proposed application encompasses the most important aspects which should be taken into account regarding dysphonic patients. It is a multidimensional scope which involves subjective questionnaires and perceptual, aerodynamic, acoustic and stroboscopic evaluations. In this system, the authors have designed and created simple tools for recording and automatic acoustic analysis for the acquisition and edition of stroboscopic images. The purpose is to work with all necessary tools running on a single application, without having to export and import data from other computer programs. Therefore, the objective is to synthetize the basic voice and the exploration of the vocal folds, simplifying it through the design of a program which helps us to analyze step-by-step each aspect of the vocal pathology. The evaluation of the tool has been performed by the otolaryngologists through periodical (medical) appointments on 25 patients for one year a year, and the results are promising either for the professionals as well as for the patients which receive a detailed report with the objective information concerning the features of their voice and vocal cords.
Highlights
Considering the number of people suffering voice pathologies: between 3% and 9% in USA (Nerrière et al 2009), and 5% in Spain
Workers without vocal use Personal data analysis Before assessing the results provided through/with the software, we review the grounds of the attendance to the consultation and the distribution by sex of the studied patients
There are plenty of programs (Matassini and Manfredi 2002; Hadjitodorov and Mitev 2002; Gelzinis et al 2008) which serve as a tool for doctors who study the voice during an appointment
Summary
Considering the number of people suffering voice pathologies: between 3% and 9% in USA (Nerrière et al 2009), and 5% in Spain Accessed 26 August 2012), it is clear that these kinds of problems affect a very high percentage of the population This is the reason why the authors believe that the study and development of techniques for the detection of vocal pathologies is important. It is important that the specialist knows the limitations the techniques used present, as VLS is only capable of capturing images at the speed of 25–30 frames/s (Lee et al 2001). These limitations affect mainly to the diagnosis of movement related pathologies and to the analysis of vocal fold vibration cycle, which in the case of VLS images it is only a human eye optical illusion
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