Understanding differences between healthy swallows and penetration-aspiration swallows via compressive sensing of tri-axial swallowing accelerometry signals.

Abstract

Swallowing accelerometry is a promising tool for non-invasive assessment of swallowing difficulties. A recent contribution showed that swallowing accelerometry signals for healthy swallows and swallows indicating laryngeal penetration or tracheal aspiration have different time-frequency structures, which may be problematic for compressive sensing schemes based on time-frequency dictionaries. In this paper, we examined the effects of different swallows on the accuracy of a compressive sensing scheme based on modulated discrete prolate spheroidal sequences. We utilized tri-axial swallowing accelerometry signals recorded from four patients during routinely schedule videofluoroscopy exams. In particular, we considered 77 swallows approximately equally distributed between healthy swallows and swallows presenting with some penetration/aspiration. Our results indicated that the swallow type does not affect the accuracy of a considered compressive sensing scheme. Also, the results confirmed previous findings that each individual axis contributes different information. Our findings are important for further developments of a device which is to be used for long-term monitoring of swallowing difficulties.