Department of Speech-Language pathology, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore, Karnataka, India.
Department of Speech-Language pathology, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore, Karnataka, India.
J Voice. 2021 Jan;35(1):159.e11-159.e18. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2019.07.010. Epub 2019 Sep 19.
Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI) has been reported to be a sensitive tool for discriminating between the normal and dysphonic voices, however, there is a dearth of research focused on investigating the diagnostic accuracy of AVQI in discriminating across the perceptual categories of dysphonia severity ie, slight, moderate, and severe. Hence, the present study is a preliminary attempt to document the AVQI across the degrees of dysphonia severity and to verify whether the AVQI can discriminate across these degrees of perceptual dysphonia severity.
A total of 71 dysphonic samples extracted from the clinical database of the institute and 19 prospectively recorded normophonic samples consisting of sustained vowel /a/ and a sentence from a standardized Kannada passage served as input data. These 90 samples were categorized into four categories based on the overall grade of perceptual dysphonia (G) as normal, slight, moderate, or severe by three experienced speech language pathologists in a randomized and double-blinded manner, which served as the ground truth. The AVQI was calculated from the samples using Praat version 6.0.40 and the AVQI script version 2.03.
The Spearman's correlation test revealed a positive correlation between the G and the AVQI (r = 0.67; P < 0.001). The Receiver Operating Characteristics analysis revealed that the AVQI could accurately discriminate across the perceptual subcategories of dysphonia.
The results of the present study revealed that AVQI is a robust multiparametric measure which can accurately discriminate across the subcategories of the perceptual dysphonia severity with reasonable precision. Further, the AVQI is also shown to be promising in evaluating the signals with higher levels of aperiodicity such as severe hoarse voice quality.
声学语音质量指数 (AVQI) 已被报道为区分正常和发声障碍声音的敏感工具，然而，缺乏研究集中在调查 AVQI 在区分不同程度的发声障碍严重程度即轻度、中度和重度方面的诊断准确性。因此，本研究初步尝试记录了 AVQI 在不同程度的发声障碍中的表现，并验证了 AVQI 是否可以区分这些不同程度的感知性发声障碍严重程度。
本研究从研究所的临床数据库中提取了 71 个发声障碍样本，以及 19 个前瞻性记录的正常声音样本，包括持续的元音 /a/ 和一段来自标准卡纳达语文章的句子，作为输入数据。这些 90 个样本由三名经验丰富的言语语言病理学家以随机和双盲的方式根据整体感知性发声障碍程度（G）分为正常、轻度、中度或重度四个类别，作为ground truth。使用 Praat 版本 6.0.40 和 AVQI 脚本版本 2.03 从样本中计算 AVQI。
Spearman 相关检验显示 G 与 AVQI 之间存在正相关（r=0.67; P<0.001）。接收器操作特性分析显示 AVQI 可以准确区分发声障碍的感知亚类。
本研究的结果表明，AVQI 是一种稳健的多参数测量工具，可以准确区分感知性发声障碍严重程度的亚类，具有合理的精度。此外，AVQI 也显示出在评估具有更高非周期性水平的信号方面具有潜力，例如严重的嘶哑音质。
