Intraoral voice recording-towards anew smartphone-based method for vocal rehabilitation. German version

Abstract

After laryngectomy, anew voice is needed. We present the first steps in the development of asmartphone-based method. Amicrophone is placed in the mouth to record the pseudo-whispering voice of laryngectomized patients. This recording is analyzed by voice recognition software followed by voice synthesis. Eventually, this will be performed on asmartphone. We placed amicrophone at 10 different places inside and outside the mouth (two in front of the mouth (at 2 and 20 cm), five on the palate and three on the lower jaw) and made voice recordings in eight healthy men. These recordings were analyzed by voice recognition software. The text generated by the software was compared with the original text. Over all positions, the correct detection of words recorded in the mouth was 19.3% vs. 75.2% (p = 0.01) outside the mouth. In the mouth, recording taken on the maxilla (22.8%) was much better than on the mandible (13.5%) (p = 0.01). The optimum position for amicrophone on the maxilla was at the highest point of the palate with 31.9% correct word identification there (p = 0.028). Further investigations have to be undertaken with forthcoming development of smartphone processing power and with development of asmartphone-based voice recognition application.