Objective multi-parameters analysis of the voice dysphonia

Objective: The purposes of this paper are to develop a multi-parametric protocol, which can evaluate the voice objectively and quantitatively,and to investigate its correlation with the perceptual analysis.

Methods: The voice samples were collected from 83 patients with dysphonia and 40 subjects with normal voices. All the subjects were women. The objective parameters, including fundamental frequency (F0), jitter, Shimmer, fundamental frequency standard deviation (F0SD), fundamental frequency tremor, amplitude tremor, normalized noise energy (NNE), harmonic-to-noise ratio(HNR), signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) and maximal phonatory time (MPT), which were measured mainly on a sustained vowel /a/, were recorded on a software named Dr. Speech for Windows. According to the G component of the GRBAS, the voice was graded from 0 for normal to 3 for severe dysphonia.

Results: Using the discriminate analysis, a five parameters protocol (MPT, jitter, NNE, HNR and shimmer) was developed and it showed that this protocol allowed 79.8% concordance with jury classification.

Conclusions: The voice objective analysis should be multi-parameters. Our multi-parameters evaluation protocol is able to reflect the result of perceptual analysis.