Relating Cepstral Peak Prominence to Cyclical Parameters of Vocal Fold Vibration from High-Speed Videoendoscopy Using Machine Learning: A Pilot Study

Objective: Smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPs) has been shown to be an effective indicator of breathiness (Hillenbrand and Houde, 1996). High-speed videoendoscopy (HSV) is frequently being used as a complement to stroboscopy especially when asymmetric or aperiodic vocal fold vibration is present in dysphonic voices. In an HSV image data set obtained with normal (nondisordered) voice subjects, we have observed that some degree of asymmetry is present in many of the vocal fold displacement curves extracted from the HSV exam videos; therefore, we have used this data set for a pilot study to investigate the relationship of CPPs to cyclical vocal fold vibration parameters, including left-right vocal fold (LVRF) phase asymmetry, in subjects with normal (nondisordered) voices. Methods: Twenty subjects with normal (nondisordered) voices produced sustained vowel phonations while undergoing a transoral HSV examination of the vocal folds with synchronized recording of the voice signal. Glottal area waveform (GAW) and cyclical parameters open quotient (OQ), closed quotient (CQ), speed quotient (SQ), and LVRF skew were extracted from the HSV exam videos, and CPPs measures were obtained from acoustic analysis of the audio recordings.