Objective auscultation for traditional Chinese medical diagnosis using novel acoustic parameters

Abstract

The goal of this work is to propose novel acoustic parameters of voice for the purpose of providing a quantitative analysis of auscultation in traditional Chinese medical diagnosis. There is rare amount of available literature related to this topic. Four novel acoustic parameters, the average number of zero-crossings, the variations in local peaks and valleys, the variations in first and second formant frequencies, and the spectral energy ratio, are presented to analyze and identify the characteristics among non-vacuity, qi-vacuity, and yin-vacuity subjects. Among these acoustic parameters, two temporal parameters, the average number of zero-crossings and the variations in local peaks and valleys, outperformed other parameters in classifying both non-vacuity and deficient subjects. The spectral energy ratio was adequate for the classification between qi-vacuity and yin-vacuity patients. This research is a first step in an ongoing effort to modernize the auscultation in traditional Chinese medical diagnosis.