Parabolic spectral parameter - A new method for quantification of the glottal flow

This study presents a new frequency domain parameter, Parabolic Spectral Parameter (PSP), for the quantification of the glottal volume velocity waveform. PSP is based on fitting a parabolic function to the low-frequency part of a pitch-synchronously computed spectrum of the estimated glottal flow. PSP gives a single numerical value that describes how the spectral decay of an obtained glottal flow behaves with respect to a theoretical limit corresponding to maximal spectral decay. By analyzing speech signals of different phonation types the performance of the new parameter is compared to three commonly used time-based parameters and to one previously developed frequency domain method. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.