Acoustic assessment of voice and speech disorders in Parkinson's disease through quick vocal test.

The disorders of voice and speech in Parkinson’s disease (PD) result from involvements in several subsystems including respiration, phonation, articulation, and prosody. We investigated the feasibility of acoustic measures for the identification of voice and speech disorders in PD, using a quick vocal test consisting of sustained phonation, diadochokinetic task, and running speech. Various traditional and novel acoustic measurements have been designed in order to be gender independent, represent all speech subsystems, reduce the time required for voice investigation, and provide a reliable automated assessment in practice.