Prediction of Post-Treatment Outcome of Pathologic Voice Using Voice Synthesis

Background and Objectives : Patients with pathologic voice often concern about recovery of voice after surgery. In our investigation, we give controlled values of three parameters of voice synthesis program of Dr. Speech Science. such as jitter, shimmer, and NNE(normalized noise energy) which characterize someone's voice from others and deviced a method to synthesize the predicted voice after performing operation. Subjects and Method : Values of vocal jitter, vocal shimmer, and glottal noise were measured with voices of 10 vocal cord Paralysis and 10 vocal Polyp Patients 1 week Prior to and 1 month after the surgery. With Dr. Speech science voice synthesis program we synthesized 'ae' vowel which is closely identical to preoperative and post-operative voice of the patients by controlling the values of jitter, shimmer, and glottal noise. then we analyzed the synthesized voices and compared with pre and post-operative voice. Results : 1) After inputting the preoperative and corrected values of jitter, shimmer, and glottal noise into the voice synthesis Program, voices identical to vocal Polyp Patients' Pre- and Postoperative voices withiin statistical significance were synthesized 2) After elimination of synergistic effects between three paramenter, we were able to synthesize voice identical to vocal paralysis patients' preoperative voices. 3) After inputting only slightly increased jitter, shimmer into the synthesis program, we were able to synthesize voice identical to vocal cord paralysis patients' postoperative voices. Conclusion : Voices synthesized with Dr. Speech science program were identical to patients' actual pre and postoperative voice, and clinicians will be able to give the patients more information and thus increased patients cooperability can be expected.ope