The Advanced Voice Function Assessment Databases (AVFAD): Tools for Voice Clinicians and Speech Research

Abstract

A new open access resource called Advanced Voice Function Assessment Databases (AVFAD) was developed, based on a sample of 709 individuals (346 clinically diagnosed with vocal pathology and 363 with no vocal alterations) recruited in Portugal. All clinical conditions were registered according to the Classification Manual of Voice Disorders-I. Participants were audio-recorded, producing the following vocal tasks: Sustaining vowels /a, i, u/; reading of six CAPE-V sentences; reading a phonetically balanced text; spontaneous speech. The AVFAD are comprised of 8648 uncompressed audio files and an addi- tional database file with 19 Praat Voice Report parameter values and 16 clinical data entries per participant. An annotated segment of the vowel /a/ for each participant was analysed automatically with a Praat script. Radial graphs were generated considering that all variables had an approximately normal distribution, and using previously calculated average and standard deviation values for all parameters. The normal and pathological f0 mean, Jitter ppq5, Shimmer apq11 and Harmonics-to-Noise-Ratio characteristics were compared. An additional analysis of the relation between the acoustic parameters and gender, age group, smoking habits, body mass index and voice usage, was considered. The AVFAD will allow future cooperative work and testing of non-invasive methods for voice pathology diagnosis. for the female gender, with much larger sample size, the results showed statis tically significant differences between normality and the six pathologies, in relation to Shimmer, Jitter, and HNR parameters. When the Nodules and Reinke’s Edema groups were compared to the normal group, significant differences in the f0 parameter were found as well. Accordingly, this study suggests that, in females, the studied vocal pathologies affect strongly the acoustic parameters Jitter, Shimmer, and HNR. The first two are increased, and HNR is decreased.