Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder characterized by difficulty in articulating sounds, syllables, and words due to muscle weakness or coordination problems. It can result from various neurological conditions, affecting speech clarity and intelligibility.
Vocal biomarkers are unique speech characteristics or patterns that provide valuable information about an individual’s health, including potential indications of neurological diseases and motor speech disorders.
Potential applications of vocal biomarkers can range from early disease detection, remote health monitoring, mental health assessment, personalized medicine, marketing analytics, to forensic science including lie detection in certain contexts.
Vocal biomarkers use advanced technologies to process the acoustic signal, detect or quantify certain speech-related events and interpret the measures of a person’s voice, such as pitch, tone, cadence, and more.
Yes, vocal biomarkers are non-invasive as only a recording of a person’s voice is required. No needles, probes, electrodes, or any physical contact involved.
Research has shown that vocal biomarkers can be highly reliable, especially when combined with other diagnostic methods. Nevertheless, their accuracy can vary depending on the specific application and the quality of data like any other medical measurement.
While vocal biomarkers are an emerging field, they are gaining interest in research and clinical settings. A widespread adoption is currently hindered by a lack of transparency and standardization in data capture, processing, and measurement as well as sensitivity of vocal biomarkers to recording device, processing procedures, language, and cultural aspects of speech.
Yes, privacy is an important consideration. It’s key that voice data is collected and stored securely, and that individuals’ consent is obtained for its use in biomarker analysis. Special attention should be given to privacy concerns when data undergoes processing in the cloud including safeguarding sensitive information, ensuring that it is stored and handled securely with robust encryption, access controls, and regular audits to monitor compliance with privacy policies. Additionally, clear policies should be established regarding data retention and deletion to mitigate potential risks associated with cloud-based processing. Although these measures can minimize the risk related to cloud processing, it never assures perfect safety, therefore, we recommend to process sensitive voice data offline whenever possible.
Vocal biomarkers can indicate various other health conditions and attributes beyond motor speech disorders. Some of the potential areas where vocal biomarkers have shown promise include:
While vocal biomarkers hold promise in these domains, it’s crucial to emphasize that they require further research and validation before becoming widely accepted as diagnostic tools. The field of vocal biomarker research is rapidly advancing, and the scope of this technology’s potential applications continues to expand. As ongoing research unfolds, vocal biomarkers may play an increasingly pivotal role in healthcare, facilitating early detection and enhanced management of diverse health conditions.
Motor speech disorders are have been researched perceptually for more than half a century and have already established its place in healthcare. Therefore, it is a perfect starting point for foundation of the new exciting technology of vocal biomarkers. Also, the variety of speech symptoms is very rich and can be translated to other less explored diseases. Finally, we focus on one thing to do it well. Please be the one who will help us to scale up and use our technology on other diseases!
To get started with the Dysarthria Analyzer, you will need the following:
Getting started is simple! Just sign up on our website for free and explore our user-friendly tutorials and guides to begin your journey.
Yes, our software offers valuable insights into motor speech disorders, aiding in accurate diagnosis and treatment planning. The software is tailored as a tool that you can juxtapose with other findings. However, the final decision is upon you and you have to allways follow the whole recommended examination with regard to the hierarchy (please see Figure bellow):
Figure: Hierarchical representation of what a clinician should and can consider for the diagnosis of motor speech disorder. Note that the Dysarhria Analyzer is one the the tools providing interpretable acoustic analysis. Source: Hlavnička, J. (2019). Automated analysis of speech disorders in neurodegenerative diseases. Presentation material for the defence of the doctoral Thesis. Czech Technical University in Prague: Prague, Czech Republic.
Auzou, P., Ozsancak, C., Jan, M., Menard, J.F., Eustache, F., & Hannequin, D. (2000). Evaluation of motor speech function in the diagnosis of various forms of dysarthria. Revue Neurologique, 156, 47-52.
Fonville, S., Van Der Worp, H.B., Maat, P., Aldenhoven, M., Algra, A., & Van Gijn, J. (2008). Accuracy and inter-observer variation in the classification of dysarthria from speech recordings. Journal of Neurology, 255, 1545-1548.
Graaff, M., Kuiper, T., Zwinderman, A., Van de Warrenburg, B., Poels, P., Offeringa, A., Van der Kooi, A., Speelman, H., & De Visser, M. (2009). Clinical identification of dysarthria types among neurologists, residents in neurology and speech therapists. European Neurology, 61, 295-300.
Zyski, B.J., & Weisiger, B.E. (1987). Identification of dysarthria types based on perceptual analysis. Journal of Communication Disorders, 20, 367-378.
Absolutely! Our software generates visualized data to enhance your understanding of speech patterns and biomarkers. The figures are so simple that even untrained person can understand them for the first sight.
The developer can assure you that the Dysarthria Analyzer has been designed and tested for the following symptoms and diseases (the possible applications are much larged and outside of the developer’s scope): hypokinetic dysarthria, multiple system atrophy, vocal tremor, dysprosody, progressive supranuclear palsy, REM sleep behaviour disorder, dysphonia, Parkinson’s disease, spastic dysarthria, cervical dystonia, laryngeal dystonia, essential tremor, Huntington’s disease, Hyperkinetic dysarthria, cerebellar ataxia, mixed dysarthria, ataxic dysarthria, multiple sclerosis, chorea, alogia.
Indeed! Our software allows data export, facilitating further analysis and integration into your research.
Certainly! Our software provides valuable data for assessing the impact of pharmacological interventions on speech patterns.
We welcome collaborations! Reach out to us to explore potential partnerships in advancing dysarthria research. We will provide you to fill a special registration since the software is available only for noncommercial research.
The standard free license restrict the use by commercial subject and incorporation into automated systems, Nevertheless, we can tailor a special registration and license that will allow you to seamlessly incorporate our software into your business workflow.
Absolutely! We offer flexible pricing models to cater to the specific needs of your business.
