Cepstral Peak Prominence-Based Phonation Stabilisation Time as an Indicator of Voice Disorder

Abstract

A common feature of voice disorders is the impairment of the ability to initiate and sustain adequately periodic vocal fold vibrations. Traditional acoustic approaches that use sustained vowels in which initial/final portions are excluded have been criticised for poor validity and for exclusion of factors that may be a rich source of clinically relevant data e.g. regarding the onset of vocal fold vibration.

The aim of this study was to establish if phonation stabilisation time (PST), as determined by cepstal peak prominence (CPP), is useful as an indicator of voice disorders in connected speech.

Disordered voices from all groups showed a significantly longer mean PST than normal voices from the same group. The proportion of voiced segments that reached the stable threshold of periodicity were significantly higher for normal voices in all groups.

Our results indicate that PST using CPP has potential to differentiate between the normal and disordered voices. The results for the 'below threshold' groups for both male and female are of particular interest. These results suggest that PST using CPP may be a potential indicator of voice disorder in cases where traditional acoustic analysis measures of sustained vowels do not show any pathological findings.