Pre-post surgery evaluation based on the profile of glottal source

December 13-15, 2007: Firenze, Italy, ed. by C. Manfredi, ISBN 978 88-8453-673-3 (print) ISBN 978-88-8453-674-7 (online) © Firenze university press, 2007. Abstract: Nowadays an ever increasing interest in voice studies is present in the research and application fields both under biomedical and bioengineering scopes. Everyday more resources are assigned to this research field looking for new methods easing the study, evaluation and diagnose of voice pathology. In this sense it is well known that the mucosal wave is a fundamental phenomenon present in voice production, highly related to voice quality. In such a way when a specific pathology is present in vocal folds producing modifications in their dynamic model the amount of mucosal wave is sensibly altered. The present work uses results from inverse filtering to derive a mucosal wave correlate from the glottal flow derivative. Therefore two important estimates of the phonation pattern (glottal excitation) and the vocal fold behaviour (mucosal wave correlate) may be used in pathology detection. A clinical study case corresponding to the presence of a polyp on a single vocal fold (unilateral) is conducted to evaluate the pathological alteration produced on the dynamics of the vocal folds and on the presence of mucosal wave. The results illustrating the behaviour of the glottal closure and vocal fold dynamics obtained before and after treatment are given and discussed.