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doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.

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Automatic speech-based assessment to discriminate Parkinson's disease from essential tremor with a cross-language approach

  • Autoři: Rios-Urrego, C.D., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Orozco-Arroyave, J.R.
  • Publikace: npj Digital Medicine. 2024, 7 ISSN 2398-6352.
  • Rok: 2024
  • DOI: 10.1038/s41746-024-01027-6
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-024-01027-6
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson's disease (PD) and essential tremor (ET) are prevalent movement disorders that mainly affect elderly people, presenting diagnostic challenges due to shared clinical features. While both disorders exhibit distinct speech patterns-hypokinetic dysarthria in PD and hyperkinetic dysarthria in ET-the efficacy of speech assessment for differentiation remains unexplored. Developing technology for automatic discrimination could enable early diagnosis and continuous monitoring. However, the lack of data for investigating speech behavior in these patients has inhibited the development of a framework for diagnostic support. In addition, phonetic variability across languages poses practical challenges in establishing a universal speech assessment system. Therefore, it is necessary to develop models robust to the phonetic variability present in different languages worldwide. We propose a method based on Gaussian mixture models to assess domain adaptation from models trained in German and Spanish to classify PD and ET patients in Czech. We modeled three different speech dimensions: articulation, phonation, and prosody and evaluated the models' performance in both bi-class and tri-class classification scenarios (with the addition of healthy controls). Our results show that a fusion of the three speech dimensions achieved optimal results in binary classification, with accuracies up to 81.4 and 86.2% for monologue and /pa-ta-ka/ tasks, respectively. In tri-class scenarios, incorporating healthy speech signals resulted in accuracies of 63.3 and 71.6% for monologue and /pa-ta-ka/ tasks, respectively. Our findings suggest that automated speech analysis, combined with machine learning is robust, accurate, and can be adapted to different languages to distinguish between PD and ET patients.

Spoken Language Alterations can Predict Phenoconversion in Isolated rapid eye movement Sleep Behavior Disorder: A Multicentric Study

  • Autoři: Šubert, M., Ing. Michal Novotný, Ph.D., Ing. Tereza Tykalová, Ph.D., Hlavnička, J., Dušek, P., Růžička, E., Škrabal, D., Pelletier, A., Postuma, R.B., Montplaisir, J., Gagnon, J.-F., Galbiati, A., Ferini-Strambi, L., Marelli, S., St Louis, E.K., Timm, P.C., Teigen, L.N., Janzen, A., Oertel, W., Heim, B., Holzknecht, E., Stefani, A., Högl, B., Dauvilliers, Y., Evangelista, E., Šonka, K., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Annals of Neurology. 2024, 95(3), 530-543. ISSN 0364-5134.
  • Rok: 2024
  • DOI: 10.1002/ana.26835
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.26835
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Objective: This study assessed the relationship between speech and language impairment and outcome in a multicenter cohort of isolated/idiopathic rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (iRBD).Methods: Patients with iRBD from 7 centers speaking Czech, English, German, French, and Italian languages underwent a detailed speech assessment at baseline. Story-tale narratives were transcribed and linguistically annotated using fully automated methods based on automatic speech recognition and natural language processing algorithms, leading to the 3 distinctive linguistic and 2 acoustic patterns of language deterioration and associated composite indexes of their overall severity. Patients were then prospectively followed and received assessments for parkinsonism or dementia during follow-up. The Cox proportional hazard was performed to evaluate the predictive value of language patterns for phenoconversion over a follow-up period of 5 years.Results: Of 180 patients free of parkinsonism or dementia, 156 provided follow-up information. After a mean follow-up of 2.7 years, 42 (26.9%) patients developed neurodegenerative disease. Patients with higher severity of linguistic abnormalities (hazard ratio [HR = 2.35]) and acoustic abnormalities (HR = 1.92) were more likely to develop a defined neurodegenerative disease, with converters having lower content richness (HR = 1.74), slower articulation rate (HR = 1.58), and prolonged pauses (HR = 1.46). Dementia-first (n = 16) and parkinsonism-first with mild cognitive impairment (n = 9) converters had higher severity of linguistic abnormalities than parkinsonism-first with normal cognition converters (n = 17).Interpretation: Automated language analysis might provide a predictor of phenoconversion from iRBD into synucleinopathy subtypes with cognitive impairment, and thus can be used to stratify patients for neuroprotective trials. ANN NEUROL 2023

Articulatory undershoot of vowels in isolated REM sleep behavior disorder and early Parkinson's disease

  • DOI: 10.1038/s41531-022-00407-7
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-022-00407-7
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Imprecise vowels represent a common deficit associated with hypokinetic dysarthria resulting from a reduced articulatory range of motion in Parkinson's disease (PD). It is not yet unknown whether the vowel articulation impairment is already evident in the prodromal stages of synucleinopathy. We aimed to assess whether vowel articulation abnormalities are present in isolated rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (iRBD) and early-stage PD. A total of 180 male participants, including 60 iRBD, 60 de-novo PD and 60 age-matched healthy controls performed reading of a standardized passage. The first and second formant frequencies of the corner vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ extracted from predefined words, were utilized to construct articulatory-acoustic measures of Vowel Space Area (VSA) and Vowel Articulation Index (VAI). Compared to controls, VSA was smaller in both iRBD (p = 0.01) and PD (p = 0.001) while VAI was lower only in PD (p = 0.002). iRBD subgroup with abnormal olfactory function had smaller VSA compared to iRBD subgroup with preserved olfactory function (p = 0.02). In PD patients, the extent of bradykinesia and rigidity correlated with VSA (r = -0.33, p = 0.01), while no correlation between axial gait symptoms or tremor and vowel articulation was detected. Vowel articulation impairment represents an early prodromal symptom in the disease process of synucleinopathy. Acoustic assessment of vowel articulation may provide a surrogate marker of synucleinopathy in scenarios where a single robust feature to monitor the dysarthria progression is needed.

Assessing clinical utility of machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches to analyze speech recordings in multiple sclerosis: A pilot study

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105853
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105853
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: An early diagnosis together with an accurate disease progression monitoring of multiple sclerosis is an important component of successful disease management. Prior studies have established that multiple sclerosis is correlated with speech discrepancies. Early research using objective acoustic measurements has discovered measurable dysarthria.Method: The objective was to determine the potential clinical utility of machine learning and deep learning/AI approaches for the aiding of diagnosis, biomarker extraction and progression monitoring of multiple sclerosis using speech recordings. A corpus of 65 MS-positive and 66 healthy individuals reading the same text aloud was used for targeted acoustic feature extraction utilizing automatic phoneme segmentation. A series of binary classification models was trained, tuned, and evaluated regarding their Accuracy and area-under-the-curve.Results: The Random Forest model performed best, achieving an Accuracy of 0.82 on the validation dataset and an area-under-the-curve of 0.76 across 5 k-fold cycles on the training dataset. 5 out of 7 acoustic features were statistically significant.Conclusion: Machine learning and artificial intelligence in automatic analyses of voice recordings for aiding multiple sclerosis diagnosis and progression tracking seems promising. Further clinical validation of these methods and their mapping onto multiple sclerosis progression is needed, as well as a validating utility for English-speaking populations.

Automated speech analysis in early untreated Parkinson's disease: Relation to gender and dopaminergic transporter imaging

  • DOI: 10.1111/ene.15099
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1111/ene.15099
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background The mechanisms underlying speech abnormalities in Parkinson's disease (PD) remain poorly understood, with most of the available evidence based on male patients. This study aimed to estimate the occurrence and characteristics of speech disorder in early, drug-naive PD patients with relation to gender and dopamine transporter imaging. Methods Speech samples from 60 male and 40 female de novo PD patients as well as 60 male and 40 female age-matched healthy controls were analyzed. Quantitative acoustic vocal assessment of 10 distinct speech dimensions related to phonation, articulation, prosody, and speech timing was performed. All patients were evaluated using [123]I-2b-carbomethoxy-3b-(4-iodophenyl)-N-(3-fluoropropyl) nortropane single-photon emission computed tomography and Montreal Cognitive Assessment. Results The prevalence of speech abnormalities in the de novo PD cohort was 56% for male and 65% for female patients, mainly manifested with monopitch, monoloudness, and articulatory decay. Automated speech analysis enabled discrimination between PD and controls with an area under the curve of 0.86 in men and 0.93 in women. No gender-specific speech dysfunction in de novo PD was found. Regardless of disease status, females generally showed better performance in voice quality, consonant articulation, and pauses production than males, who were better only in loudness variability. The extent of monopitch was correlated to nigro-putaminal dopaminergic loss in men (r = 0.39, p = 0.003) and the severity of imprecise consonants was related to cognitive deficits in women (r = -0.44, p = 0.005). Conclusions Speech abnormalities represent a frequent and early marker of motor abnormalities in PD. Despite some gender differences, our findings demonstrate that speech difficulties are associated with nigro-putaminal dopaminergic deficits.

Automated video-based assessment of facial bradykinesia in de-novo Parkinson’s disease

  • DOI: 10.1038/s41746-022-00642-5
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00642-5
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Even though hypomimia is a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease (PD), objective and easily interpretable tools to capture the disruption of spontaneous and deliberate facial movements are lacking. This study aimed to develop a fully automatic video-based hypomimia assessment tool and estimate the prevalence and characteristics of hypomimia in de-novo PD patients with relation to clinical and dopamine transporter imaging markers. For this cross-sectional study, video samples of spontaneous speech were collected from 91 de-novo, drug-naïve PD participants and 75 age and sex-matched healthy controls. Twelve facial markers covering areas of forehead, nose root, eyebrows, eyes, lateral canthal areas, cheeks, mouth, and jaw were used to quantitatively describe facial dynamics. All patients were evaluated using Movement Disorder Society-Unified PD Rating Scale and Dopamine Transporter SinglePhoton Emission Computed Tomography. Newly developed automated facial analysis tool enabled high-accuracy discrimination between PD and controls with area under the curve of 0.87. The prevalence of hypomimia in de-novo PD cohort was 57%, mainly associated with dysfunction of mouth and jaw movements, and decreased variability in forehead and nose root wrinkles (p < 0.001). Strongest correlation was found between reduction of lower lip movements and nigro-putaminal dopaminergic loss (r = 0.32, p = 0.002) as well as limb bradykinesia/rigidity scores (r = −0.37 p < 0.001). Hypomimia represents a frequent, early marker of motor impairment in PD that can be robustly assessed via automatic video-based analysis. Our results support an association between striatal dopaminergic deficit and hypomimia in PD.

Dysprosody in Isolated REM Sleep Behavior Disorder with Impaired Olfaction but Intact Nigrostriatal Pathway

  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.28873
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28873
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background Impairments of olfactory and speech function are likely early prodromal symptoms of alpha-synucleinopathy. Objective The aim of this study is to assess whether dysprosody is present in isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) with hyposmia/anosmia and a normal nigrostriatal system. Methods Pitch variability during speech was investigated in 17 iRBD subjects with normal olfactory function (iRBD-NOF), 30 iRBD subjects with abnormal olfactory function (iRBD-AOF), and 50 healthy controls. iRBD subjects were evaluated using the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test and [123I]-2ss-carbomethoxy-3ss-(4-iodophenyl)-N-(3-fluoropropyl)-nortropane dopamine transporter single-photon emission computed tomography (DAT-SPECT). All iRBD subjects completed the 24-month follow-up with DAT-SPECT, speech, and olfactory testing. Results At baseline, only iRBD-AOF showed monopitch when compared to iRBD-NOF (P = 0.04) and controls (P = 0.03), with no difference between iRBD-NOF and controls (P = 1). At follow-up, dysprosody progressed only in iRBD-AOF with abnormal DAT-SPECT (P = 0.03). Conclusion Prosody is impaired in hyposmic but not in normosmic iRBD subjects before the nigrostriatal dopaminergic transmission is affected (Braak stage 2). (c) 2021 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society

Increased Transferrin Sialylation Predicts Phenoconversion in Isolated REM Sleep Behavior Disorder

  • Autoři: Ganapathy, S.R., Levova, K., Kotackova, L., Trnka, J., Zogala, D., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Zima, T., Devos, D., Šonka, K., Růžička, E., Kalousová, M., Dušek, P.
  • Publikace: MOVEMENT DISORDERS. 2022, 37(5), 983-992. ISSN 0885-3185.
  • Rok: 2022
  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.28942
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28942
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: Sialic acid-protein interactions are involved in regulating central nervous system immunity; therefore, derangements in sialylation could be involved in neurodegeneration. Objectives: We evaluate the differences in serum transferrin sialylation in prodromal and early-stage Parkinson’s disease (PD), its relation to substantia nigra degeneration, and the risk of phenoconversion to manifest disease. Methods: Sixty treatment-naive PD patients; 72 polysomnography-confirmed isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) patients, that is, patients with prodromal synucleinopathy; and 46 healthy volunteers aged ≥45 years and drinking ≤60 standard drinks per month were included. The proportion of serum lowsialylated, carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) isoforms was assessed using high-performance liquid chromatography, and the values were adjusted for alcohol intake (CDTadj). Dopamine transporter single-photon emission computed tomography (DaT-SPECT) imaging was performed. In iRBD, phenoconversion risk of DaTSPECT and CDTadj was evaluated using Cox regression adjusted for age and sex. Results: Median CDTadj was lower in PD (1.1 [interquartile range: 1.0–1.3]%) compared to controls (1.2 [1.1–1.6]%) (P = 0.001). In iRBD, median CDTadj was lower in subjects with abnormal (1.1 [0.9–1.3]%) than normal (1.3 [1.2–1.6]%) DaT-SPECT (P = 0.005). After a median 44-month follow-up, 20% of iRBD patients progressed to a manifest disease. Although iRBD converters and nonconverters did not significantly differ in CDTadj levels (P = 0.189), low CDTadj increased the risk of phenoconversion with hazard ratio 3.2 (P = 0.045) but did not refine the phenoconversion risk associated with abnormal DaT-SPECT yielding hazard ratio 15.8 (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Decreased serum CDTadj is associated with substantia nigra degeneration in synucleinopathies. iRBD patients with low CDTadj are more likely to phenoconvert to manifest disease.

Is Gait Dysfunction a Prominent Sign of Isolated Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder?

  • Autoři: Neťuková, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Ruzicka, E., Krupička, R.
  • Publikace: MOVEMENT DISORDERS. 2022, 2022 1575-1576. ISSN 0885-3185.
  • Rok: 2022
  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.29119
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.29119
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    De Cock et al reporting a high classification accuracy of 95% to distinguish between isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and healthy control subjects, using analysis of gait. Although the results appear to be promising, they should be interpreted cautiously.

Linguistic Abnormalities in Isolated Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder

  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.29140
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.29140
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: Patients with synucleinopathies frequently display language abnormalities. However, whether patients with isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) have prodromal language impairment remains unknown. Objectives: We examined whether the linguistic abnormalities in iRBD can serve as potential biomarkers for conversion to synucleinopathy, including the possible effect of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), speaking task, and automation of analysis procedure. Methods: We enrolled 139 Czech native participants, including 40 iRBD without MCI and 14 iRBD with MCI compared to 40 PD without MCI, 15 PD with MCI, and 30 healthy controls. Spontaneous discourse and story tale narrative were transcribed and linguistically annotated. A quantitative analysis was performed computing 3 linguistic features. Human annotations were compared to fully-automated annotations. Results: Compared to controls, iRBD patients showed poorer content density, reflecting the reduction of content words and modifiers. Both PD and iRBD subgroups with MCI manifested less occurrence of unique words and a higher number of n-grams repetitions, indicating poorer lexical richness. The spontaneous discourse task demonstrated language impairment in iRBD without MCI with an area under the curve of 0.72, while the story tale narrative task better reflected the presence of MCI, discriminating both PD and iRBD subgroups with MCI from controls with an area under the curve of up to 0.81. A strong correlation between manually and automatically computed results was achieved. Conclusions: Linguistic features might provide a reliable automated method for detecting cognitive decline due to prodromal neurodegeneration in subjects with iRBD, providing critical outcomes for future therapeutic trials.

Long-Term Averaged Spectrum Descriptors of Dysarthria in Patients With Parkinson’s Disease Treated With Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation

  • DOI: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00308
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00308
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate whether long-term averaged spectrum (LTAS) descriptors for reading and monologue are suitable to detect worsening of dysarthria in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) treated with subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) with potential effect of ON and OFF stimulation conditions and types of connected speech. Method: Four spectral moments based on LTAS were computed for monologue and reading passage collected from 23 individuals with PD treated with bilateral STN-DBS and 23 age-and gender-matched healthy controls. Speech performance of patients with PD was compared in ON and OFF STN-DBS conditions. Results: All LTAS spectral moments including mean, standard deviation, skew-ness, and kurtosis across both monologue and reading passage were able to significantly distinguish between patients with PD in both stimulation conditions and control speakers. The spectral mean was the only LTAS measure sensitive to capture better speech performance in STN-DBS ON, as compared to the STN-DBS OFF stimulation condition (p < .05). Standardized reading passage was more sensitive compared to monologue in detecting dysarthria severity via LTAS descriptors with an area under the curve of up to 0.92 obtained between PD and control groups. Conclusions: Our findings confirmed that LTAS is a suitable approach to objec-tively describe changes in speech impairment severity due to STN-DBS therapy in patients with PD. We envisage these results as an important step toward a continuum development of technological solutions for the automated assessment of stimulation-induced dysarthria.

Práh pro somatosenzorickou časovou diskriminaci nediferencuje mezi pacienty s esenciálním a dystonickým třesem hlavy

  • Autoři: Holly, P., Duspivová, T., Kemlink, D., Ulmanová, O., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Krupička, R., Jech, R., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Časopis Česká a Slovenská neurologie a neurochirurgie. 2022, 85/118 163-167. ISSN 1210-7859.
  • Rok: 2022
  • DOI: 10.48095/cccsnn2022163
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.48095/cccsnn2022163
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Cíl: Cílem práce bylo ozřejmit využitelnost vyšetření prahu pro somatosenzorickou časovou diskriminaci (somatosensory temporal discrimination threshold; STDT) u pacientů s třesem hlavy k rozlišení pacientů s esenciálním (ET) a dystonickým třesem hlavy při cervikální dystonii (CD). Soubor a metodika: Bylo vyšetřeno 42 pacientů s třesem hlavy (21 ET a 21 CD) a 20 zdravých kontrol (healthy controls; HC). Byla odebrána anamnéza (začátek příznaků, rodinná anamnéza, efekt alkoholu) a byly hodnoceny škály tíže třesu hlavy a horních končetin, tíže CD a tíže ataxie. Poté byl vyšetřen STDT. Jde o metodu založenou na stanovení nejkratšího intervalu, v němž jedinec rozpozná dva taktilní podněty jako časově oddělené. Výsledky: V anamnestických datech nebyly mezi pacienty s ET a CD nalezeny významné rozdíly. Ve škálách se obě skupiny pacientů signifikantně lišily – pacienti s ET měli vyšší tíži třesu horních končetin, pacienti s CD zase vyšší míru dystonie (p < 0,0001). Obě skupiny měly vyšší míru ataxie, více pacienti s ET (p = 0,0008). Hodnoty STDT byly vyšší u pacientů s ET vs. u HC (p = 0,0067). Nenašli jsme významnější rozdíly při srovnání skupin pacientů s ET vs. CD. Závěr: U pacientů s třesem hlavy byly pozorovány abnormálně zvýšené hodnoty STDT u ET, ale ne u CD, pravděpodobně v důsledku narušených mechanizmů zpracování somatosenzorických podnětů a vnímání času, které se připisují postižení mozečku. Nicméně při srovnání vyšetřovaných skupin pacientů jsme nenašli signifikantní rozdíl v hodnotě STDT.

Short-term effect of dopaminergic medication on speech in early-stage Parkinson's disease

  • DOI: 10.1038/s41531-022-00286-y
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-022-00286-y
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The effect of dopaminergic medication on speech has rarely been examined in early-stage Parkinson's disease (PD) and the respective literature is inconclusive and limited by inappropriate design with lack of PD control group. The study aims to examine the short-term effect of dopaminergic medication on speech in PD using patients with good motor responsiveness to levodopa challenge compared to a control group of PD patients with poor motor responsiveness. A total of 60 early-stage PD patients were investigated before (OFF) and after (ON) acute levodopa challenge and compared to 30 age-matched healthy controls. PD patients were categorised into two clinical subgroups (PD responders vs. PD nonresponders) according to the comparison of their motor performance based on movement disorder society-unified Parkinson's disease rating scale, part Ill. Seven distinctive parameters of hypokinetic dysarthria were examined using quantitative acoustic analysis. We observed increased monopitch (p> 0.01), aggravated monoloudness (p> 0.05) and longer duration of stop consonants (p> 0.05) in PD compared to healthy controls, confirming the presence of hypokinetic dysarthria in early PD. No speech alterations from OFF to ON state were revealed in any of the two PD groups and speech dimensions investigated including monopitch, monoloudness, imprecise consonants, harsh voice, slow sequential motion rates, articulation rate, or inappropriate silences, although a subgroup of PD responders manifested obvious improvement in motor function after levodopa intake (p> 0.001). Since the short-term usage of levodopa does not easily affect voice and speech performance in PD, speech assessment may provide a medication state-independent motor biomarker of PD.

Speech acoustic indices for differential diagnosis between Parkinson’s disease, multiple system atrophy and progressive supranuclear palsy

  • DOI: 10.1038/s41531-022-00389-6
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-022-00389-6
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    While speech disorder represents an early and prominent clinical feature of atypical parkinsonian syndromes such as multiple system atrophy (MSA) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), little is known about the sensitivity of speech assessment as a potential diagnostic tool. Speech samples were acquired from 215 subjects, including 25 MSA, 20 PSP, 20 Parkinson’s disease participants, and 150 healthy controls. The accurate differential diagnosis of dysarthria subtypes was based on the quantitative acoustic analysis of 26 speech dimensions related to phonation, articulation, prosody, and timing. A semi-supervised weighting-based approach was then applied to find the best feature combinations for separation between PSP and MSA. Dysarthria was perceptible in all PSP and MSA patients and consisted of a combination of hypokinetic, spastic, and ataxic components. Speech features related to respiratory dysfunction, imprecise consonants, monopitch, slow speaking rate, and subharmonics contributed to worse performance in PSP than MSA, whereas phonatory instability, timing abnormalities, and articulatory decay were more distinctive for MSA compared to PSP. The combination of distinct speech patterns via objective acoustic evaluation was able to discriminate between PSP and MSA with very high accuracy of up to 89% as well as between PSP/MSA and PD with up to 87%. Dysarthria severity in MSA/PSP was related to overall disease severity. Speech disorders reflect the differing underlying pathophysiology of tauopathy in PSP and α-synucleinopathy in MSA. Vocal assessment may provide a low-cost alternative screening method to existing subjective clinical assessment and imaging diagnostic approaches.

Study protocol for using a smartphone application to investigate speech biomarkers of Parkinson's disease and other synucleinopathies: SMARTSPEECH

  • DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-059871
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-059871
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Introduction: Early identification of Parkinson's disease (PD) in its prodromal stage has fundamental implications for the future development of neuroprotective therapies. However, no sufficiently accurate biomarkers of prodromal PD are currently available to facilitate early identification. The vocal assessment of patients with isolated rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (iRBD) and PD appears to have intriguing potential as a diagnostic and progressive biomarker of PD and related synucleinopathies. Methods and analysis: Speech patterns in the spontaneous speech of iRBD, early PD and control participants' voice calls will be collected from data acquired via a developed smartphone application over a period of 2 years. A significant increase in several aspects of PD-related speech disorders is expected, and is anticipated to reflect the underlying neurodegeneration processes. Ethics and dissemination: The study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the General University Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic and all the participants will provide written, informed consent prior to their inclusion in the research. The application satisfies the General Data Protection Regulation law requirements of the European Union. The study findings will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international scientific conferences.

Toward Automated Articulation Rate Analysis via Connected Speech in Dysarthrias

  • DOI: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00549
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00549
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the reliability of different approaches for estimating the articulation rates in connected speech of Parkinsonian patients with different stages of neurodegeneration compared to healthy controls. Method: Monologues and reading passages were obtained from 25 patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD), 25 de novo patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), 20 patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA), and 20 healthy controls. The recordings were subsequently evaluated using eight syllable localization algorithms, and their performances were compared to a manual transcript used as a reference. Results: The Google & Pyphen method, based on automatic speech recognition followed by hyphenation, outperformed the other approaches (automated vs. hand transcription: r > .87 for monologues and r > .91 for reading passages, p < .001) in precise feature estimates and resilience to dysarthric speech. The Praat script algorithm achieved sufficient robustness (automated vs. hand transcription: r > .65 for monologues and r > .78 for reading passages, p < .001). Compared to the control group, we detected a slow rate in patients with MSA and a tendency toward a slower rate in patients with iRBD, whereas the articulation rate was unchanged in patients with early untreated PD. Conclusions: The state-of-the-art speech recognition tool provided the most precise articulation rate estimates. If speech recognizer is not accessible, the freely available Praat script based on simple intensity thresholding might still provide robust properties even in severe dysarthria. Automated articulation rate assessment may serve as a natural, inexpensive biomarker for monitoring disease severity and a differential diagnosis of Parkinsonism

Biomarkers of conversion to α-synucleinopathy in isolated rapid-eye-movement sleep behaviour disorder

  • Autoři: Miglis, M.G., Adler, C.H., Antelmi, E., Arnaldi, D., Boeve, B., Cesari, M., Dall’Antonia, I., Diederich, N.J., Doppler, K., Dušek, P., Ferri, R., Baldelli, L., Gagnon, J.-F., Gan-Or, Z., Hermann, W., Hogl, B., Hu, M.T., Iranzo, A., Janzen, A., Kuzkina, A., Lee, J.-Z., Leenders, K.L., Lewis, S.J.G., Liguori, C., Liu, J., Lo, C., Ehgoetz Martens, K.A., Nepožitek, J., Plazzi, G., Provini, F., Puligheddu, M., Rolinski, M., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D. Stefani, A., Summers, R.L.S., Yoo, D., Zitser, J., Oertel, W.H.
  • Publikace: Lancet Neurology. 2021, 20(8), 671-684. ISSN 1474-4422.
  • Rok: 2021
  • DOI: 10.1016/S1474-4422(21)00176-9
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(21)00176-9
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Patients with isolated rapid-eye-movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) are commonly regarded as being in the early stages of a progressive neurodegenerative disease involving α-synuclein pathology, such as Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, or multiple system atrophy. Abnormal α-synuclein deposition occurs early in the neurodegenerative process across the central and peripheral nervous systems and might precede the appearance of motor symptoms and cognitive decline by several decades. These findings provide the rationale to develop reliable biomarkers that can better predict conversion to clinically manifest α-synucleinopathies. In addition, biomarkers of disease progression will be essential to monitor treatment response once disease-modifying therapies become available, and biomarkers of disease subtype will be essential to enable prediction of which subtype of α-synucleinopathy patients with isolated RBD might develop.

Defining Speech Subtypes in De Novo Parkinson Disease: Response to Long-term Levodopa Therapy

  • DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000012878
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000012878
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background and objectives: Patterns of speech disorder in Parkinson disease (PD), which are highly variable across individual patients, have not been systematically studied. Our aim was to identify speech subtypes in treatment-naive patients with PD and to examine their response to long-term dopaminergic therapy. Methods: We recorded speech data from a total of 111 participants with de novo PD; 83 of the participants completed the 12-month follow-up (69 patients with PD on stable dopaminergic medication and 14 untreated controls with PD). Unsupervised k-means cluster analysis was performed on 8 distinctive parameters of hypokinetic dysarthria examined with quantitative acoustic analysis. Results: Three distinct speech subtypes with similar prevalence, symptom duration, and motor severity were detected: prosodic, phonatory-prosodic, and articulatory-prosodic. Besides monopitch and monoloudness, which were common in each subtype, speech impairment was more severe in the phonatory-prosodic subtype with predominant dysphonia and the articulatory-prosodic subtype with predominant imprecise consonant articulation than in the prosodic subtype. Clinically, the prosodic subtype was characterized by a prevalence of women and younger age, while articulatory-prosodic subtype was characterized by the prevalence of men, older age, greater severity of axial gait symptoms, and poorer cognitive performance. The phonatory-prosodic subtype clinically represented intermediate status in age with mostly men and preserved cognitive performance. While speech of untreated controls with PD deteriorated over 1 year (p = 0.02), long-term dopaminergic medication maintained stable speech impairment severity in the prosodic and articulatory-prosodic subtypes and improved speech performance in patients with the phonatory-prosodic subtype (p = 0.002).

Distinct patterns of speech disorder in early-onset and late-onset de-novo Parkinson's disease

  • DOI: 10.1038/s41531-021-00243-1
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-021-00243-1
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Substantial variability and severity of dysarthric patterns across Parkinson's disease (PD) patients may reflect distinct phenotypic differences. We aimed to compare patterns of speech disorder in early-onset PD (EOPD) and late-onset PD (LOPD) in drug-naive patients at early stages of disease. Speech samples were acquired from a total of 96 participants, including two subgroups of 24 de-novo PD patients and two subgroups of 24 age- and sex-matched young and old healthy controls. The EOPD group included patients with age at onset below 51 (mean 42.6, standard deviation 6.1) years and LOPD group patients with age at onset above 69 (mean 73.9, standard deviation 3.0) years. Quantitative acoustic vocal assessment of 10 unique speech dimensions related to respiration, phonation, articulation, prosody, and speech timing was performed. Despite similar perceptual dysarthria severity in both PD subgroups, EOPD showed weaker inspirations (p = 0.03), while LOPD was characterized by decreased voice quality (p = 0.02) and imprecise consonant articulation (p = 0.03). In addition, age-independent occurrence of monopitch (p < 0.001), monoloudness (p = 0.008), and articulatory decay (p = 0.04) was observed in both PD subgroups. The worsening of consonant articulation was correlated with the severity of axial gait symptoms (r = 0.38, p = 0.008). Speech abnormalities in EOPD and LOPD share common features but also show phenotype-specific characteristics, likely reflecting the influence of aging on the process of neurodegeneration. The distinct pattern of imprecise consonant articulation can be interpreted as an axial motor symptom of PD.

Does Cognitive Impairment Influence Motor Speech Performance in De Novo Parkinson's Disease?

  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.28836
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28836
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    We read with great interest the recent study by Garcia et al., which showed differing patterns of dysarthria in Parkinson's disease (PD) subgroups with and without mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI and PD-nMCI, respectively) across two speaking tasks with low (reading) and high (retelling) processing demands. To complement the data and overcome some of the noted limitations such as a requirement for replication, missing within-group comparisons to assess direct contrasts between speaking tasks, unavailable measure of intensity, and potential confounding effect of dopaminergic medication, we investigated the effect of cognitive impairment on motor speech performance in de-novo, drug-naive PD with a similar study design.

Effect of Ageing on Acoustic Characteristics of Voice Pitch and Formants in Czech Vowels

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2020.02.022
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2020.02.022
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: The relevance of formant-based measures has been noted across a spectrum of medical, technical, and linguistic applications. Therefore, the primary aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of ageing on vowel articulation, as the previous research revealed contradictory findings. The secondary aim was to provide normative acoustic data for all Czech monophthongs. Methods: The database consisted of 100 healthy speakers (50 men and 50 women) aged between 20 and 90. Acoustic characteristics, including vowel duration, vowel space area (VSA), fundamental frequency (fo), and the first to fourth formant frequencies (F1−F4) of 10 Czech vowels were extracted from a reading passage. In addition, the articulation rate was calculated from the entire duration of the reading passage. Results: Age-related changes in pitch were sex-dependent, while age-related alterations in F2/a/, F2/u/, VSA, and vowel duration seemed to be sex-independent. In particular, we observed a clear lowering of fo with age for women, but no change for men. With regard to formants, we found lowering of F2/a/ and F2/u/ with increased age, but no statistically significant changes in F1, F3, or F4 frequencies with advanced age. Although the alterations in F1 and F2 frequencies were rather small, they appeared to be in a direction against vowel centralization, resulting in a significantly greater VSA in the older population. The greater VSA was found to be related partly to longer vowel duration. Conclusions: Alterations in vowel formant frequencies across several decades of adult life appear to be small or in a direction against vowel centralization, thus indicating the good preservation of articulatory precision in older speakers.

Effect of reading passage length on quantitative acoustic speech assessment in Czech-speaking individuals with Parkinson's disease treated with subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation

  • DOI: 10.1121/10.0005050
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0005050
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Little is known about the minimum sample length required for the stable acoustic assessment of speech in Parkinson's disease (PD). This study aimed to investigate the effect of the duration of the reading passage on the determination of reliable acoustic patterns in individuals with PD treated with subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation. A phonetically balanced reading text of 313 words was collected from 32 Czech persons with PD, and 32 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. The reading passage was segmented to produce ten sub-texts of increasing length ranging from a one- to a ten-segment-long sub-text. An error rate analysis was used to estimate the required stabilization value by evaluating the differences between the sub-texts and the entire text across seven hypokinetic dysarthria features. The minimum length of a reading passage equal to 128 words was found to be necessary for acoustic assessment, with similar lengths being required for the controls (120 words) and the two PD subgroups, including Parkinsonian individuals with a mild (126 words) and moderate (128 words) dysarthria severity. The current study provides important guidelines for the necessary sample length for future expert instrumental dysarthria assessments and assists in decreasing the time required for clinical speech evaluations.

Guidelines for Speech Recording and Acoustic Analyses in Dysarthrias of Movement Disorders

  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.28465
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28465
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Most patients with movement disorders have speech impairments resulting from sensorimotor abnormalities that affect phonatory, articulatory, and prosodic speech subsystems. There is widespread cross-discipline use of speech recordings for diagnostic and research purposes, despite which there are no specific guidelines for a standardized method. This review aims to combine the specific clinical presentations of patients with movement disorders, existing acoustic assessment protocols, and technological advances in capturing speech to provide a basis for future research in this field and to improve the consistency of clinical assessments. We considered 3 areas: the recording environment (room, seating, background noise), the recording process (instrumentation, vocal tasks, elicitation of speech samples), and the acoustic outcome data. Four vocal tasks, namely, sustained vowel, sequential and alternating motion rates, reading passage, and monologues, are integral aspects of motor speech assessment. Fourteen acoustic vocal speech features, including their hypothesized pathomechanisms with regard to typical occurrences in hypokinetic or hyperkinetic dysarthria, are hereby recommended for quantitative exploratory analysis. Using these acoustic features and experimental speech data, we demonstrated that the hyperkinetic dysarthria group had more affected speech dimensions compared with the healthy controls than had the hypokinetic speakers. Several contrasting speech patterns between both dysarthrias were also found. This article is the first attempt to provide initial recommendations for a standardized way of recording the voice and speech of patients with hypokinetic or hyperkinetic dysarthria; thus allowing clinicians and researchers to reliably collect, acoustically analyze, and compare vocal data across different centers and patient cohorts.

Reply to: "Fostering Voice Objective Analysis in Patients With Movement Disorders"

  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.28539
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28539
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    We thank Asci et al. for raising the subsequent discussion on the use of machine learning, the type of recording devices and speaking tasks in the field of motor speech disorders. We agree that multidimensional analysis via machine learning could improve sensitivity/specificity in the quantification of specific dysarthria-related aspects. However, the machine learning approach based on high-dimensional data requires a considerable sample size for reliable estimates, whereas studies on motor speech disorder are typically restricted by small sample sizes available (usually less than 100 subjects per group). The disadvantage of many features applied is the high risk for overfitting.

Reproducibility of Voice Analysis with Machine Learning

  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.28604
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28604
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    We read with great interest the recent study by Suppa et al., which performed voice analysis in patients with essential tremor (ET) with (ETVT+) and without (ETVT-) clinically overt voice tremor based on power spectral analysis and machine learning. Traditional spectral analysis showing a prominent oscillatory activity peak at 2–6 Hz in ETVT+ seems to be in agreement with a recent study reporting the occurrence of both low (<4 Hz) and medium (4–7 Hz) vocal tremor in ET.

Speech Biomarkers in Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder and Parkinson Disease

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Hlavnička, J., Ing. Michal Novotný, Ph.D., Ing. Tereza Tykalová, Ph.D., Pelletier, A., Montplaisir, J., Gagnon, J.-F., Dušek, P., Galbiati, A., Marelli, S., Timm, P.C., Teigen, L.N., Janzen, A., Habibi, M., Stefani, A., Holzknecht, E., Seppi, K., Evangelista, E., Rassu, A.L., Dauvilliers, Y., Högl, B., Oertel, W., St Louis, E., Ferini-Strambi, L., Ruzicka, E., Postuma, R.B., Šonka, K.
  • Publikace: Annals of Neurology. 2021, 16900(1953/45), 62-75. ISSN 0364-5134.
  • Rok: 2021
  • DOI: 10.1002/ana.26085
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.26085
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Objective: This multilanguage study used simple speech recording and high-end pattern analysis to provide sensitive and reliable noninvasive biomarkers of prodromal versus manifest alpha-synucleinopathy in patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) and early-stage Parkinson disease (PD). Methods: We performed a multicenter study across the Czech, English, German, French, and Italian languages at 7 centers in Europe and North America. A total of 448 participants (337 males), including 150 with iRBD (mean duration of iRBD across language groups 0.5-3.4 years), 149 with PD (mean duration of disease across language groups 1.7-2.5 years), and 149 healthy controls were recorded; 350 of the participants completed the 12-month follow-up. We developed a fully automated acoustic quantitative assessment approach for the 7 distinctive patterns of hypokinetic dysarthria. Results: No differences in language that impacted clinical parkinsonian phenotypes were found. Compared with the controls, we found significant abnormalities of an overall acoustic speech severity measure via composite dysarthria index for both iRBD (p = 0.002) and PD (p < 0.001). However, only PD (p < 0.001) was perceptually distinct in a blinded subjective analysis. We found significant group differences between PD and controls for monopitch (p < 0.001), prolonged pauses (p < 0.001), and imprecise consonants (p = 0.03); only monopitch was able to differentiate iRBD patients from controls (p = 0.004). At the 12-month follow-up, a slight progression of overall acoustic speech impairment was noted for the iRBD (p = 0.04) and PD (p = 0.03) groups. Interpretation: Automated speech analysis might provide a useful additional biomarker of parkinsonism for the assessment of disease progression and therapeutic interventions.

Transfer learning helps to improve the accuracy to classify patients with different speech disorders in different languages

  • Autoři: Vasquez-Correa, J.C., Rios-Urrego, C.D., Arias-Vergara, T., Schuster, M., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Noth, E., Orozco-Arroyave, J.R.
  • Publikace: Pattern Recognition Letters. 2021, 150 272-279. ISSN 0167-8655.
  • Rok: 2021
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.patrec.2021.04.011
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2021.04.011
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Patients suffering from neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's or Huntington's disease exhibit speech impairments that affect their communication capabilities. The automatic assessment of the speech of the patients allows to develop computer aided tools to support the diagnosis and to evaluate the disease severity, which helps clinicians to make timely decisions about the treatment of the patients. This paper extends our previous studies about methods to classify patients with neurodegenerative diseases from speech. The proposed approach considers convolutional neural networks trained with time frequency representations and a transfer learning strategy to classify different speech impairments in patients that are native of different languages. The transfer learning schemes aim to improve the accuracy of the models when the weights of a neural network are initialized with utterances from a different corpus than the one used for the test set. The proposed methodology is evaluated with speech data from Parkinson's disease patients, who are Spanish, German, and Czech native speakers, Huntington's disease patients, who are Czech native speakers, and English native speakers affected by laryngeal impairments. We performed experiments in two scenarios: (1) transfer learning among languages, where a base model is transferred to classify patients with the same disease, but who speak a different language, and (2) transfer learning among diseases, where the base model is transferred to a corpus from patients with a different disease. The results suggest that the transfer learning schemes improve the accuracy in the target corpus only when the base model is accurate enough to transfer the knowledge to the target corpus. This behavior is observed in different scenarios of both transfer learning among languages and diseases.

Validation of cepstral peak prominence in assessing early voice changes of Parkinson’s disease: effect of speaking task and ambient noise.

  • DOI: 10.1121/10.0009063
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0009063
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although cepstral peak prominence (CPP) and its smooth variant (CPPS) are considered robust acoustic measures for the evaluation of dysphonia, whether they are sensitive to capture early voice changes in Parkinson’s disease (PD) has not yet been explored. This study aimed to investigate voice changes via CPP measures in idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep disorder behaviour (iRBD), a special case of prodromal neurodegeneration, and in both newly diagnosed, and advanced-stage PD patients using different speaking tasks across noise-free and noisy environments. The sustained vowel phonation, the reading of passages and the monologues of 60 early-stage untreated PD, 30 advanced-stage PD, 60 iRBD, and 60 healthy control (HC) participants were evaluated. We found significant differences between both PD groups and the controls in sustained phonation via CPP (p < 0.05) and CPPS (p < 0.01) and in monologue via CPP (p < 0.01), although neither CPP nor CPPS measures were sufficiently sensitive to capture possible prodromal dysphonia in iRBD. The quality of both CPP and CPPS measures was influenced substantially by the addition of ambient noise. We anticipated that CPP measures might serve as a promising digital biomarker in assessing dysphonia from the early stages of PD.

3D visual cueing shortens the double support phase of the gait cycle in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease treated with DBS of the STN

  • Autoři: Poláková, K., Růžička, E., Jech, R., Kemlink, D., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Miletinová, E., Brožová, H.
  • Publikace: PLoS ONE. 2020, 15(12), ISSN 1932-6203.
  • Rok: 2020
  • DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244676
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244676
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background. Gait disturbances have emerged as some of the main therapeutic concerns in late-stage Parkinson's disease (PD) treated with dopaminergic therapy and deep brain stimulation (DBS). External cues may help to overcome freezing of gait (FOG) and improve some of the gait parameters. Aim. To evaluate the effect of 3D visual cues and STN-DBS on gait in PD group. Methods. We enrolled 35 PD patients treated with DBS of nucleus subthalamicus (STN-DBS). Twenty-five patients (5 females; mean age 58.9 +/- 6.3) and 25 sex- and age-matched controls completed the gait examination. The gait in 10 patients deteriorated in OFF state. The severity of PD was evaluated using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and Hoehn and Yahr (HY). The PD group filled the Falls Efficacy Scale-International (FES) and Freezing of Gait Questionnaire (FOGQ). Gait was examined using the GaitRite Analysis System, placed in the middle of the 10m marked path. The PD group was tested without dopaminergic medication with and without visual cueing together with the DBS switched ON and OFF. The setting of DBS was double-blind and performed in random order. Results. The UPDRS was 21.9 +/- 9.5 in DBS ON state and 41.3 +/- 13.7 in DBS OFF state. HY was 2.5 +/- 0.6, FES 12.4 +/- 4.1 and FOGQ 9.4 +/- 5.7. In the DBS OFF state, PD group walked more slowly with shorter steps, had greater step length variability and longer duration of the double support phase compared to healthy controls. The walking speed and step length increased in the DBS ON state. The double support phase was reduced with 3D visual cueing and DBS; the combination of both cueing and DBS was even more effective. Conclusion. Cueing with 3D visual stimuli shortens the double support phase in PD patients treated with DBS-STN. The DBS is more effective in prolonging step length and increasing gait speed. We conclude that 3D visual cueing can improve walking in patients with DBS.

Automated Assessment of Oral Diadochokinesis in Multiple Sclerosis Using a Neural Network Approach: Effect of Different Syllable Repetition Paradigms

  • DOI: 10.1109/TNSRE.2019.2943064
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2019.2943064
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Slow and irregular oral diadochokinesis represents an important manifestation of spastic and ataxic dysarthria in multiple sclerosis (MS). We aimed to develop a robust algorithm based on convolutional neural networks for the accurate detection of syllables from different types of alternating motion rate (AMR) and sequential motion rate (SMR) paradigms. Subsequently, we explored the sensitivity of AMR and SMR paradigms based on voiceless and voiced consonants in the detection of speech impairment. The four types of syllable repetition paradigms including /ta/, /da/, /pa/-/ta/-/ka/, and /ba/-/da/-/ga/ were collected from 120 MS patients and 60 matched healthy control speakers. Our neural network algorithm was able to correctly identify the position of individual syllables with a very high average accuracy of 97.8%, with the correct temporal detection of syllable position of 87.8% for 10 ms and 95.5% for 20 ms tolerance value. We found significantly altered diadochokinetic rate and regularity in MS compared to controls across all types of investigated tasks (p < 0.001). MS patients showed slower speech for SMR compared to AMR tasks, whereas voiced paradigms were more irregular. Objective evaluation of oral diadochokinesis using different AMR and SMR paradigms may provide important information regarding speech severity and pathophysiology of the underlying disease.

Characterizing vocal tremor in progressive neurological diseases via automated acoustic analyses

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2020.02.005
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2020.02.005
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Objective: Voice tremor represents a common but frequently overlooked clinical feature of neurological disease. Therefore, we aimed to quantitatively and objectively assess the characteristics of voice tremor in a large sample of patients with various progressive neurological diseases. Methods: Voice samples were acquired from 240 patients with neurological disease and 40 healthy controls. The robust automated method was designed, allowing precise tracking of multiple tremor frequencies and distinguish pathological from the physiological tremor. Results: Abnormal tremor was revealed in Huntington’s disease (65%), essential tremor (50%), multiple system atrophy (40%), cerebellar ataxia (40%), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (40%), progressive supranuclear palsy (25%), Parkinson’s disease (20%), cervical dystonia (10%), and multiple sclerosis (8%) but not in controls. Low-frequency voice tremor (< 4 Hz) was common in all investigated diseases, whereas medium tremor frequencies (4–7 Hz) were specific for movement disorders of Parkinson’s disease, multiple system atrophy, essential tremor, and cervical dystonia. Conclusions: Careful estimation of vocal tremor may help with accurate diagnosis and tailored treatment. Significance: This study provides (i) more insights into the pathophysiology of vocal tremor in a wide range of neurological diseases and (ii) an accurate method for estimation of vocal tremor suitable for clinical practice.

Comment on "pro-saccades predict cognitive decline in Parkinson's disease: ICICLE-PD"

  • Autoři: Hanuška, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Bezdíček, O., Dušek, P., Šonka, K., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: MOVEMENT DISORDERS. 2020, 35(3), 522. ISSN 0885-3185.
  • Rok: 2020
  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.27957
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.27957
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    We read with interest the article by Dr. Stuart et al. entitled “Pro-Saccades Predict Cognitive Decline in Parkinson’s Disease: ICICLE-PD“ showing on the large cohort that prosaccades are a predictor of cognitive decline in Parkinson disease (PD). As mentioned in the article, PD is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and cognitive impairment in PD is frequently present.2 Finding new biomarkers is a very important way how to understand the patophysiology and improve patient-level prediction in PD.3 We feel obliged to add important points to complete the picture of the above mentioned study.

Comparison of Automated Acoustic Methods for Oral Diadochokinesis Assessment in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

  • DOI: 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00109
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00109
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Purpose: The purpose of this article is to provide a performance comparison of available algorithms for the automated evaluation of oral diadochokinesis using speech samples from patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Method: Four different algorithms based on a wide range of signal processing approaches were tested on a sequential motion rate /pa/-/ta/-/ka/ syllable repetition paradigm collected from 18 patients with ALS and 18 age and gender-matched healthy controls. Results: The best temporal detection of syllable position for a 10 ms tolerance value was achieved for ALS patients using a traditional signal processing approach based on a combination of filtering in the spectrogram, Bayesian detection, and polynomial thresholding with an accuracy rate of 74.4%, and for healthy controls using a deep learning approach with an accuracy rate of 87.6%. Compared to healthy controls, a slow diadochokinetic rate (p < 0.001) and diadochokinetic irregularity (p < 0.01) were detected in ALS patients. Conclusions: The approaches using deep learning or multiple-step combinations of advanced signal processing methods provided a more robust solution to the estimation of oral DDK variables than did simpler approaches based on the rough segmentation of the signal envelope. The automated acoustic assessment of oral diadochokinesis shows excellent potential for monitoring bulbar disease progression in individuals with ALS.

Dysarthria enhancement mechanism under external clear speech instruction in Parkinson’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-020-02171-5
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-020-02171-5
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Clear speech refers to intentionally modifying conversational speech to maximise intelligibility. This study aimed to compare the speech behaviour of patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), multiple system atrophy (MSA) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) under conversational and clear speech conditions to gain greater pathophysiological insight. A total of 68 participants including 17 PD, 17 MSA, 17 PSP and 17 healthy controls (HC) performed two readings of the same standardized passage. During the first reading, participants were instructed to read the text in an ordinary way, while during the second reading to read the text as clearly as possible. Acoustic analyses were based upon measurements of mean loudness, loudness variability, pitch variability, vowel articulation, articulation rate and speech severity. During clear speech production, PD patients were able to achieve improvements mainly in loudness (p < 0.05) and pitch variability (p < 0.001), leading to a reduction in overall speech severity (p < 0.001), whereas PSP and MSA patients were able to modulate only articulation rate (p < 0.05). Contrary to HC and PD groups, which slowed or maintained articulation rate, PSP and MSA groups employed a markedly faster articulation rate under the clear speech condition indicating an opposing approach to speech adaptation. Patients with atypical Parkinsonism showed a different strategy to intentionally improve their speech performance following a simple request to produce speech more clearly compared to PD, suggesting important therapeutic implications for speech rehabilitation management.

Eye movement abnormalities are associated with brainstem atrophy in Wilson disease

  • Autoři: Hanuška, J., Dušek, P., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Ulmanová, O., Burgetová, A., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Neurological Sciences. 2020, 41(5), 1097-1103. ISSN 1590-1874.
  • Rok: 2020
  • DOI: 10.1007/s10072-019-04225-3
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-019-04225-3
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Backgrounds This study aims to characterize eye movement abnormalities in Wilson disease and examine their association with the degree of brainstem atrophy. Methods Twenty patients (10 males, mean age 46.8, SD 8.9 years) with genetically confirmed neurological WD on stable anti-copper treatment and 20 age- and sex-matched healthy subjects were examined. Eye movements, including prosaccade and antisaccade tasks, were evaluated using infrared videooculography. MRI was performed using 1.5 T system, and T-2-weighted images were used for the measurement of midbrain and pontine area on mid-sagittal slices. Clinical severity was assessed using the Unified Wilson's Disease Rating Scale (UWDRS). Results Compared to healthy controls, WD patients showed prolonged latencies of horizontal prosaccades and hypometry of both horizontal (p = 0.04) and vertical (p = 0.0046) prosaccades. In the antisaccade task, WD patients showed prolonged latency of both horizontal (p = 0.04) and vertical antisaccades (p = 0.047) and increased error rate of vertical antisaccades (p = 0.04). There is a significant association between midbrain area and horizontal latencies (r = -0.53; p = 0.02) and vertical maximum speed in prosaccades (r = 0.47; p = 0.04). The pons area inversely correlated with horizontal prosaccade and antisaccade latencies (p = 0.007). Conclusions We showed impairments of ocular saccades such as prolonged latencies, hypometry, and increased error rate in antisaccades. The strong association between prolonged latencies of prosaccades and the brainstem atrophy suggests that VOG might serve as a sensitive electrophysiological marker of brainstem dysfunction in WD.

From discourse to pathology: Automatic identification of Parkinson's disease patients via morphological measures across three languages.

  • Autoři: Eyigoz, E., Courson, M., Sedeno, L., Rogg, K., Orozco-Arroyave, J.R., Noth, E., Skodda, S., Trujillo, N., Rodrıguez, M., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Munoz, E., Cardona, J.F., Herrera, E., Hesse, E., Ibanez, A., Cecchi, G., Garcia, A.M.
  • Publikace: Cortex. 2020, 132 191-205. ISSN 0010-9452.
  • Rok: 2020
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.08.020
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.08.020
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Embodied cognition research on Parkinson's disease (PD) points to disruptions of frontostriatal language functions as sensitive targets for clinical assessment. However, no existing approach has been tested for crosslinguistic validity, let alone by combining naturalistic tasks with machine-learning tools. To address these issues, we conducted the first classifier-based examination of morphological processing (a core frontostriatal function) in spontaneous monologues from PD patients across three typologically different languages. The study comprised 330 participants, encompassing speakers of Spanish (61 patients, 57 matched controls), German (88 patients, 88 matched controls), and Czech (20 patients, 16 matched controls). All subjects described the activities they perform during a regular day, and their monologues were automatically coded via morphological tagging, a computerized method that labels each word with a part-of-speech tag (e.g., noun, verb) and specific morphological tags (e.g., person, gender, number, tense). The ensuing data were subjected to machine-learning analyses to assess whether differential morphological patterns could classify between patients and controls and reflect the former's degree of motor impairment. Results showed robust classification rates, with over 80% of patients being discriminated from controls in each language separately. Moreover, the most discriminative morphological features were associated with the patients' motor compromise (as indicated by Pearson r correlations between predicted and collected motor impairment scores that ranged from moderate to moderate-to-strong across languages). Taken together, our results suggest that morphological patterning, an embodied frontostriatal domain, may be distinctively affected in PD across languages and even under ecological testing conditions.

Glottal Source Analysis of Voice Deficits in Newly Diagnosed Drug-naive Patients with Parkinson's Disease: Correlation Between Acoustic Speech Characteristics and Non-Speech Motor Performanc

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.bspc.2019.101818
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2019.101818
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    As dysphonia is assumed to be the most prevalent feature of hypokinetic dysarthria in Parkinson’s disease (PD), several acoustic approaches have been introduced for its assessment. However, the sensitivity of different acoustic measures to the occurrence of dysphonia in drug-naïve de-novo patients with PD has not yet been explored. The goal of this study is to examine the performance of glottal source parametrization and compare it with traditional perturbation and cepstral measures. Sustained phonations of 40 de-novo drug-naïve PD participants and 40 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were recorded. Each utterance was ranked by a set of glottal source parameters obtained by inverse adaptive filtering, the perturbation parameters, and cepstral peak prominence measures. Our results revealed the significant differences in the glottal source parameter Harmonic Richness Factor (HRF: p <  0.01) and cepstral peak prominence parameter (p <  0.05). The support vector machine classification between PD and healthy controls reached the area under the curve of 0.78. The analysis of relationships showed significant negative correlations between HRF and total Movement Disorders Society – Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale III score (r=-0.35, p < 0.05), as well as its rigidity (r=-0.43, p < 0.01) and bradykinesia (r=-0.32, p < 0.05) sub-scores. Glottal source assessment appears to be a superior method to assess PD-related dysphonia compared to the traditional perturbation and cepstral approaches. Our results highlight that dysphonia and limb bradykinesia and rigidity in PD are controlled by similar underlying brain processes.

Instrumental analysis of finger tapping reveals a novel early biomarker of parkinsonism in idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder

  • Autoři: Krupička, R., Ing. Petr Krýže, Neťuková, S., Duspivová, T., Klempíř, O., Szabó, Z., Dušek, P., Šonka, K., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: SLEEP MEDICINE. 2020, 75 45-49. ISSN 1389-9457.
  • Rok: 2020
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.sleep.2020.07.019
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2020.07.019
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: Idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour (iRBD) is considered as a risk factor for Parkinson's disease (PD) development. Evaluation of repetitive movements with finger tapping, which serves as a principal task to measure the extent of bradykinesia in PD, may undercover potential PD patients. The aim of this study was to explore whether finger tapping abnormalities, evaluated with a 3D motion capture system, are already present in RBD patients. Methods: Finger tapping data was acquired using a contactless 3D motion capture system from 40 RBD subjects and compared to 25 de-novo PD patients and 25 healthy controls. Objective assessment of amplitude decrement, maximum opening velocity and their combination representing finger tapping decrement was performed in the sequence of the first ten tapping movements. The association between instrumental finger tapping data and semi-quantitative clinical evaluation was analyzed. Results: While significant differences between PD and controls were found for all investigated finger tapping measures (p < 0.002), RBD differed from controls in finger tapping amplitude (p = 0.004) and velocity (p = 0.007) decrement but not in maximal opening velocity. A significant relationship between the motor score from the Movement Disorders Society - Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale and finger tapping decrement was shown for both patient groups, ie RBD (r = 0.36, p = 0.02) and PD (r = 0.60, p = 0.002). Conclusions: In our group of RBD patients we demonstrated amplitude decrement of repetitive movements, which may correspond with prodromal bradykinesia. Our findings suggest instrumental analysis of finger tapping abnormalities as a potential novel clinical marker reflecting subclinical motor disturbances in RBD.

Instrumental analysis of gait abnormalities in idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder

  • Autoři: Vítečková, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Krupička, R., Dušek, P., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: MOVEMENT DISORDERS. 2020, 35(1), 193-195. ISSN 0885-3185.
  • Rok: 2020
  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.27938
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.27938
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    We read with great interest the article by Ehgoetz Martens et al. showing subtle gait differences in idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) patients under the fast-paced and cognitive dual-task conditions. Although the results appear to be promising, they are based on a relatively small sample of 24 iRBD patients compared to 14 healthy controls. In contrast, our data obtained in a larger population of iRBD patients do not confirm the findings of early gait abnormalities.

Speech disorder and vocal tremor in postural instability/gait difficulty and tremor dominant subtypes of Parkinson's disease

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-020-02229-4
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-020-02229-4
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Hypokinetic dysarthria is a multidimensional impairment affecting all main speech subsystems with variable patterns and severity across individual Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. We can thus assume that inter-individual abnormal speech patterns are related to the various clinical subtypes of PD with different prominent motor symptoms. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to compare speech disorder between patients with the postural instability/gait difficulty (PIGD) and tremor-dominant (TD) motor phenotypes of PD. Speech samples were acquired from a total of 63 participants, including 21 PIGD patients, 21 TD patients, and 21 healthy controls. Quantitative acoustic vocal assessment of 12 unique speech dimensions related to phonation, vocal tremor, oral diadochokinesis, articulation, prosody and speech timing was performed. Speech impairment was more pronounced in the PIGD group than in the TD group, with an area under the curve of 0.76. Patients in the PIGD group manifested abnormalities in pitch breaks, articulatory decay, decreased rate of follow-up speech segments and inappropriate silences, apart from monopitch and irregular AMR that were affected in TD group as well. An abnormal vocal tremor was present in only 10% of PD patients, with no differences between the PD phenotypes. We found a correlation between non-motor symptom severity and speech timing (r = - 0.40,p = 0.009). The present study demonstrates that speech disorder reflects the underlying motor phenotypes. Vocal tremor appeared to be an isolated phenomenon that does not share similar pathophysiology with limb tremor.

Validation of freely-available pitch detection algorithms across various noise levels in assessing speech captured by smartphone in Parkinson's disease

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.bspc.2019.101831
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2019.101831
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Measuring the fundamental frequency of the vocal folds F-0 is recognized as an important parameter in the assessment of speech impairments in Parkinson's disease (PD). Although a number of F-0 trackers currently exist, their performance in smartphone-based evaluation and robustness against background noise have never been tested. Monologues from 30 newly-diagnosed, untreated PD patients and 30 matched healthy control participants were collected. Additive non-stationary urban and household noise at different SNR levels was added to the recordings, which were subsequently assessed by 10 freely-available and widely-used pitch-tracking algorithms. According to the comparison of all investigated pitch detectors, sawtooth inspired pitch estimator (SWIPE) was the most robust and accurate method in estimating mean F-0 and its standard deviation. However, at a low 6 dB SNR level, a combination of more algorithms may be needed to achieve the desired precision. Monopitch, calculated as F-0 standard deviation and estimated by SWIPE, proved to be robust in distinguishing between the PD and healthy control groups (p < 0.001). We anticipate that monopitch may serve as a quick and inexpensive biomarker of disease progression based on longitudinal data collected via smartphone, without any logistical or time constraints for patients and physicians. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A forced gaussians based methodology for the differential evaluation of Parkinson's Disease by means of speech processing

  • Autoři: Moro-Velazquez, L., Gomez-Garcia, J.A., Godino-Llorente, J.I., Villalba, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Dehak, N.
  • Publikace: Biomedical Signal Processing and Control. 2019, 48(2), 205-220. ISSN 1746-8094.
  • Rok: 2019
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.bspc.2018.10.020
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2018.10.020
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Literature evidences the existence of hypokinetic dysarthria in parkinsonian patients and, consequently, the objective characterization of the dysarthric signs associated to the articulatory aspect of speech can be used to detect Parkinson's Disease (PD) providing clinicians with new tools to support the clinical diagnosis. However, no work has analyzed in detail the importance of the different phonemes in the automatic detection of PD from the speech. This work proposes new approaches for this detection by using new classification schemes that allow to compare independently the different phonetic units of patients and controls employed during several speech tasks.Three different parkinsonian corpora were used allowing cross-validation and cross-corpora trials. The results of cross-validation trials (k-folds) provided accuracies between 81% and 94%, with AUC between 0.87 and 0.97 depending on the corpus, while cross-corpora trials yielded accuracies between 66% and 76% with AUC between 0.76 and 0.87. These results suggest that PD affects to the articulatory sequence as a whole, influencing more clearly phonetic units requiring a higher narrowing of the vocal tract. Additionally, text-dependent utterances are considered as the recommended speech task for the detection of PD in this type of schemes as these allow to compare more precisely the phonetic units of patients and controls. Lastly, this work discusses the existence of a glass ceiling in the accuracy of the systems for the automatic detection of PD using speech, concluding that this is below 95% for most of the cases.

Acoustic Tracking of Pitch, Modal, and Subharmonic Vibrations of Vocal Folds in Parkinson's Disease and Parkinsonism

  • DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2945874
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2945874
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The prominent and early presence of dysphonia is considered a valuable marker for differentiation of idiopathic Parkinsons disease and parkinsonian syndromes. Objective quantification of vibrational regimes represented by modal and subharmonic vibrations may thus be vital for improving accuracy of diagnostic decision. The rationale for analyzing vibrational regimes is that abnormal subharmonic vibrations might be the key factor causing dysphonia in parkinsonian syndromes. This study introduces a new fully automated methodology based on robust pitch tracker for decoupling vibrations controlled by laryngeal muscles from the effect of subharmonics that provides distinguishing features of Parkinsons disease and atypical parkinsonian syndromes. We tested the method on resynthesized signals with known parameters and demonstrated that vibrations controlled by laryngeal muscles as well as subharmonics can be detected reliably with a precision that outperforms available technologies. We analysed 337 sustained vowels of 22 patients with PD, 21 patients with multiple system atrophy, 18 patients with progressive supranuclear palsy and 22 healthy controls. Our results showed that subharmonics are more prominent in atypical parkinsonian syndromes compared to Parkinsons disease. Also, increased modulation by laryngeal muscles appears to be a distinctive symptom of multiple system atrophy. Developed algorithm and proposed resynthesized voice signals provide further critical step to understanding and evaluation of dysphonia in Parkinsonism.

Brain volumetric correlates of dysarthria in multiple sclerosis

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2019.04.009
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2019.04.009
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although dysarthria is a common pattern in multiple sclerosis (MS), the contribution of specific brain areas to key factors of dysarthria remains unknown. Speech data were acquired from 123 MS patients with Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) ranging from 1 to 6.5 and 60 matched healthy controls. Results of computerized acoustic analyses of subtests on spastic and ataxic aspects of dysarthria were correlated with MRI-based brain volume measurements. Slow articulation rate during reading was associated with bilateral white and grey matter loss whereas reduced maximum speed during oral diadochokinesis was related to greater cerebellar involvement. Articulation rate showed similar correlation to whole brain atrophy (r=0.46, p<0.001) as the standard clinical scales such as EDSS (r=-0.45, p<0.001). Our results support the critical role of the pyramidal tract and cerebellum in the modification of motor speech timing in MS.

Convolutional Neural Networks and a Transfer Learning Strategy to Classify Parkinson’s Disease from Speech in Three Different Languages

  • Autoři: Vásquez-Correa, J.C., Arias-Vergara, T., Rios-Urrego, C.D., Schuster, M., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Orozco-Arroyave, J.R., Nöth, E.
  • Publikace: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). Wien: Springer, 2019. p. 697-706. ISSN 0302-9743. ISBN 9783030339036.
  • Rok: 2019
  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-33904-3_66
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33904-3_66
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson’s disease patients develop different speech impairments that affect their communication capabilities. The automatic assessment of the speech of the patients allows the development of computer aided tools to support the diagnosis and the evaluation of the disease severity. This paper introduces a methodology to classify Parkinson’s disease from speech in three different languages: Spanish, German, and Czech. The proposed approach considers convolutional neural networks trained with time frequency representations and a transfer learning strategy among the three languages. The transfer learning scheme aims to improve the accuracy of the models when the weights of the neural network are initialized with utterances from a different language than the used for the test set. The results suggest that the proposed strategy improves the accuracy of the models in up to 8% when the base model used to initialize the weights of the classifier is robust enough. In addition, the results obtained after the transfer learning are in most cases more balanced in terms of specificity-sensitivity than those trained without the transfer learning strategy. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.

Distinctive speech signature in cerebellar and parkinsonian subtypes of multiple system atrophy

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00415-019-09271-7
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-019-09271-7
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although motor speech disorders represent an early and prominent clinical feature of multiple system atrophy (MSA), the potential usefulness of speech assessment as a diagnostic tool has not yet been explored. This cross-sectional study aimed to provide a comprehensive, objective description of motor speech function in the parkinsonian (MSA-P) and cerebellar (MSA-C) variants of MSA. Speech samples were acquired from 80 participants including 18 MSA-P, 22 MSA-C, 20 Parkinson's disease (PD), and 20 healthy controls. The accurate differential diagnosis of dysarthria subtypes was based on quantitative acoustic analysis of 14 speech dimensions. A mixed type of dysarthria involving hypokinetic, ataxic and spastic components was found in the majority of MSA patients independent of phenotype. MSA-P showed significantly greater speech impairment than PD, and predominantly exhibited harsh voice, imprecise consonants, articulatory decay, monopitch, excess pitch fluctuation and pitch breaks. MSA-C was dominated by prolonged phonemes, audible inspirations and voice stoppages. Inappropriate silences, irregular motion rates and overall slowness of speech were present in both MSA phenotypes. Speech features allowed discrimination between MSA-P and PD as well as between both MSA phenotypes with an area under curve up to 0.86. Hypokinetic, ataxic and spastic dysarthria components in MSA were correlated to the clinical evaluation of rigidity, cerebellar and bulbar/pseudobulbar manifestations, respectively. Distinctive speech alterations reflect underlying pathophysiology in MSA. Objective speech assessment may provide an inexpensive and widely applicable screening instrument for differentiation of MSA and PD from controls and among subtypes of MSA.

Effect of pallidal deep-brain stimulation on articulation rate in dystonia

  • DOI: 10.1007/s10072-019-3702-5
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-019-3702-5
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Pallidal deep-brain stimulation of the internal globus pallidus (GPi-DBS) is an effective treatment for dystonia. However, GPi-DBS may cause important stimulation-induced side effects such as hypokinetic dysarthria, which is particularly manifested by articulation rate abnormalities. However, little data regarding the effect of the location of the electrode and stimulation parameters for pallidal stimulation on articulation rate in dystonia is available. Speech data were acquired from 18 dystonic patients with GPi-DBS and 18 matched healthy controls. Each of dystonic patients was tested twice within 1 day in both the GPi-DBS ON and GPi-DBS OFF stimulation conditions. Compared to healthy controls, the decreased diadochokinetic rate and slower articulation rate in dystonic patients were observed in both stimulation conditions. No significant differences in speech rate measures between stimulation conditions were detected with no relation to contact localization and stimulation intensity. Our findings do not support the use articulation rate as a surrogate marker of stimulation-induced changes to the speech apparatus in dystonia.

Eye movements in idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder: High antisaccade error rate reflects prefrontal cortex dysfunction

  • Autoři: Hanuška, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Bezdíček, O., Ulmanová, O., Bonnet, C., Dušek, P., Ibarburu, V., Nikolai, T., Mgr. Tomáš Sieger, Ph.D., Šonka, K., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Journal of Sleep Research. 2019, 28(5), ISSN 0962-1105.
  • Rok: 2019
  • DOI: 10.1111/jsr.12742
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12742
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů, Analýza a interpretace biomedicínských dat
  • Anotace:
    Abnormalities of eye movements have been reported in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, it is unclear if they occur in the prodromal stage of synucleinopathy represented by idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (iRBD). We thus aimed to study eye movements in subjects with iRBD and in de novo PD, to assess if their abnormalities may serve as a clinical biomarker of neurodegeneration. Fifty subjects with polysomnography-confirmed iRBD (46 male, age 40-79 years), 18 newly diagnosed, untreated PD patients (13 male, age 43-75 years) and 25 healthy controls (20 male, age 42-79 years) were prospectively enrolled. Horizontal and vertical ocular prosaccades and antisaccades were investigated with video-oculography. All patients completed the MDS-UPDRS and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. In addition, a neuropsychological battery was performed on iRBD subjects. When compared with healthy controls, both de novo PD patients and iRBD subjects showed increased error rates in the horizontal antisaccade task (p < 0.01, p < 0.05 respectively). In the iRBD group, the error rates in horizontal and vertical antisaccades correlated with performances in the Prague Stroop Test and the Grooved Pegboard Test, as well as with motor scores of the MDS-UPDRS. De novo PD patients showed a lower gain (p < 0.01) compared with controls. In conclusion, the increased error rate in the antisaccade task of iRBD and PD patients reflects a dysfunction of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and is related to the impairment of executive functions and attention.

Inpatient multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme for postural and gait stability in Huntington's disease a pilot study

  • Autoři: Brabcová, L., Roth, J., Ulmanová, O., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Klempíř, J., Horáček, O., Kolářová, M., Košková, P., Rolková, P., Božková, H., Sabo, L., Inemanová, M., Lisalova, K., Jančok, F., Růžička, E., Brožová, H.
  • Publikace: Česká a slovenská neurologie a neurochirurgie. 2019, 82(3), 301-308. ISSN 1210-7859.
  • Rok: 2019
  • DOI: 10.14735/amcsnn2019301
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.14735/amcsnn2019301
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Aim: Postural and gait instability in Huntington's disease (HD) is a key component of the motor symptomatology which contributes to an increased risk of falls. Rehabilitation is considered beneficial in postural and gait stability treatment. We aimed to explore the feasibility and the short-and long-term effects of an inpatient multidisciplinary rehabilitation program on postural and gait stability in subjects with HD. Methods: A sample of 13 subjects with HD but with no severe cognitive deficit or depression underwent a 3-week specific inpatient rehabilitation program focused on postural and gait stability. Patients were examined at the baseline, after the completion of rehabilitation, and then 1 month and 3 months after the end of the program. The testing included: gait stability examination (Dynamic Gait Index; DGI), posturography examination of postural stability on a stable (PSS) and 20% unstable (PSU) platform and the total motor score evaluation by Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS). Results: There was a significant improvement lasting 3 months in PSS and a significant improvement in DGI immediately after the rehabilitation. There was no significant improvement in the PSU and UHDRS total motor score. Conclusion: Specific rehabilitation methods are safe and feasible and may be beneficial in the treatment of postural and gait instability in patients with early and mid-stage HD. The postural instability improvement measured by PSS persisted for at least 3 months. The gait stability improvement in DGI did not persist after 1 month. We found no improvement in PSU. This exploratory study offers a sample of a specific rehabilitation protocol for stability training in HD.

Relations of non-motor symptoms and dopamine transporter binding in REM sleep behavior disorder

  • Autoři: Dušek, P., Lorenzo y Losada Ibarburu, V., Bezdíček, O., Dall’antonia, I., Dostálová, S., Kovalská, P., Krupička, R., Nepožitek, J., Nikolai, T., Ing. Michal Novotný, Ph.D., Peřinová, P., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Serranová, T., Ing. Tereza Tykalová, Ph.D., Ulmanová, O., Mecková, Z., Ptáčník, V., Trnka, J., Zogala, D., Růžička, E., Šonka, K.
  • Publikace: Scientific Reports. 2019, 9 ISSN 2045-2322.
  • Rok: 2019
  • DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-51710-y
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51710-y
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The aim of this study was to evaluate associations of motor and non-motor symptoms with dopamine transporter binding in prodromal stage of synucleinopathies. We examined 74 patients with idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), which is a prodromal synucleinopathy, and 39 controls using Movement Disorders Society-Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS), Montreal Cognitive Assessment, University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT), Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test, orthostatic test, Scales for Outcomes in PD-Autonomic, Beck depression inventory-II, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and video-polysomnography. Electromyographic muscle activity during REM sleep was quantified according to Sleep Innsbruck-Barcelona criteria. In 65 patients, dopamine transporter single-photon emission computed tomography (DAT-SPECT) imaging was performed, putaminal binding ratio was calculated and scans were classified as normal, borderline, or abnormal. Compared to controls, RBD patients had significantly more severe scores in all examined tests. Patients with abnormal DAT-SPECT had higher MDS-UPDRS motor score (p = 0.006) and higher prevalence of orthostatic hypotension (p = 0.008). Putamina I binding ratio was positively associated with UPSIT score (p =0.03) and negatively associated with tonic (p = 0.003) and phasic (p = 0.01) muscle activity during REM sleep. These associations likely reflect simultaneous advancement of underlying pathology in substantia nigra and susceptible brainstem and olfactory nuclei in prodromal synucleinopathy.

Slowed articulation rate is associated with information processing speed decline in multiple sclerosis: A pilot study

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.jocn.2019.04.018
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocn.2019.04.018
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: Impairment of cognition and speech are common in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, but their relationship is not well understood. Objective: To describe the relationship between articulation rate characteristics and processing speed and to investigate the potential role of objective speech analysis for the detection of cognitive decline in MS. Methods: A total of 122 patients with clinically definite MS were included in this cross-sectional pilot study. Patients underwent three speaking tasks (oral diadochokinesis, reading text and monologue) and assessment of processing speed (Symbol Digit Modalities Test [SDMT], Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test-3 s [PASAT-3]). Association between articulation rate and cognition was analyzed using linear regression analysis. We estimated the area under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUC) to evaluate the predictive accuracy of articulation rate measures for the detection of abnormal processing speed. Results: We observed an association between articulation rate and cognitive measures (rho = 0.45-0.58; p < 0.001). Faster reading speed by one word per second was associated with an 18.7 point (95% confidence interval ICI] 14.9-22.5) increase of the SDMT score and 14.7 (95% CI 8.9-20.4) point increase of PASAT-3 score (both p < 0.001). AUC values of articulation rate characteristics for the identification of processing speed impairment ranged between 0.67 and 0.79. Using a cutoff of 3.10 in reading speed, we were able to identify impairment in both the SDMT and PASAT-3 with 91% sensitivity and 54% specificity. Conclusion: Slowed articulation rate is strongly associated with processing speed decline. Objective quantitative speech analysis identified patients with abnormal cognitive performance. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Towards Disease-specific Speech Markers for Differential Diagnosis in Parkinsonism

  • Autoři: Das, B., Daoudi, K., Klempíř, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing Proceedings. New Jersey: IEEE Signal Processing Society, 2019. p. 5846-5850. ISSN 1520-6149. ISBN 978-1-4799-8131-1.
  • Rok: 2019
  • DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP.2019.8683887
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP.2019.8683887
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinsonism refers to Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and Atypical Parkinsonian Syndromes (APS), such as Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). Discrimination between PD and APS and within APS groups in early disease stages is a very challenging task. Interestingly, speech disorder is frequently an early and prominent clinical feature of both PD and APS. This renders speech/voice analysis a promising tool for the development of an objective marker to assist neurologists in their diagnosis. This paper is a continuation of a recent work on speech-based differential diagnosis within APS. We address the difficult problem of defining disease-specific speech features which is crucial in the perspective of early differential diagnosis. We investigate this problem by considering the constraint that only a small amount of training data can be available in this setting. To do so, we perform univariate statistical analysis followed by a supervised learning that forces the designed new features to be 1-dimensional. We carry out experiments using speech recordings of MSA and PSP patients. We show that linear classification models allow the definition of new scalar variables which can be considered as speech features which are specific to each disease, MSA and PSP.

Why patients with multiple sclerosis perceive improvement of gait during treatment with natalizumab?

  • Autoři: Novotna, K., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Kubala Havrdova, E., Lizrova Preiningerova, J.
  • Publikace: Journal of Neural Transmission. 2019, 126(6), 731-737. ISSN 0300-9564.
  • Rok: 2019
  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-019-02013-z
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-019-02013-z
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Gait impairment is one of the common manifestations of multiple sclerosis (MS) and contributes to a loss of quality of life. Natalizumab, an anti-α4 integrin monoclonal antibody, has been shown to have an effect in treatment of MS, reducing relapses and inflammatory lesions. Aim of our study was to assess how patients perceive gait impairment over the first year of treatment with natalizumab and what is the objective correlate of this change. This is an open-label prospective observational study. Subjective gait evaluation was measured by Multiple Sclerosis Walking Scale-12 (MSWS-12). Objective gait assessment included Timed 25-Foot Walk Test (T25FW) and spatiotemporal parameters of gait measured by a GAITRite instrument during a self-selected speed of walking (normal walk) and a fast speed of walking (fast walk). We analysed data of 50 patients with a relapsing–remitting form of MS, median EDSS 3.5 (range 1.5–5). MSWS-12 score significantly decreased between the baseline and month 12 of treatment (p < 0.001). Walking velocity and step length were significantly improved in Normal walk tests (p < 0.001). During the Fast walk tests, a step length and a double support time of the gait cycle were significantly improved (p = 0.001). Change in MSWS-12 score confirmed the clinically significant improvement of gait in patients with MS treated with natalizumab for 1 year. The analysis of spatiotemporal gait parameters has shown a significant improvement in self-selected gait velocity and step length.

Accuracy of Rating Scales and Clinical Measures for Screening of Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder and for Predicting Conversion to Parkinson's Disease and Other Synucleinopathies

  • Autoři: Skorvanek, M., Feketeova, E., Kurtis, M.M., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Sonka, K.
  • Publikace: Frontiers in Neurology. 2018, 9 ISSN 1664-2295.
  • Rok: 2018
  • DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2018.00376
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2018.00376
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is characterized by repeated episodes of REM sleep-related vocalizations and/or complex motor behaviors. Definite diagnosis of RBD is based on history and polysomnography, both of which are less accessible due to the lack of trained specialists and high cost. While RBD may be associated with disorders like narcolepsy, focal brain lesions, and encephalitis, idiopathic RBD (iRBD) may convert to Parkinson's disease (PD) and other synucleinopathies in more than 80% of patients and it is to date the most specific clinical prodromal marker of PD. Identification of individuals at high risk for development of PD is becoming one of the most important topics for current PD-related research as well as for future treatment trials targeting prodromal PD. Furthermore, concomitant clinical symptoms, such as subtle motor impairment, hyposmia, autonomic dysfunction, or cognitive difficulties, in subjects with iRBD may herald its phenoconversion to clinically manifest parkinsonism. The assessment of these motor and non-motor symptoms in iRBD may increase the sensitivity and specificity in identifying prodromal PD subjects. This review evaluates the diagnostic accuracy of individual rating scales and validated single items for screening of RBD and the role and accuracy of available clinical, electrophysiological, imaging, and tissue biomarkers in predicting the phenoconversion from iRBD to clinically manifest synucleinopathies.

Characteristics of motor speech phenotypes in multiple sclerosis

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.msard.2017.11.007
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msard.2017.11.007
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: Motor speech disorders in multiple sclerosis (MS) are poorly understood and their quantitative, objective acoustic characterization remains limited. Additionally, little data regarding relationships between the severity of speech disorders and neurological involvement in MS, as well as the contribution of pyramidal and cerebellar functional systems on speech phenotypes, is available. Methods: Speech data were acquired from 141 MS patients with Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) ranging from 1 to 6.5 and 70 matched healthy controls. Objective acoustic speech assessment including subtests on phonation, oral diadochokinesis, articulation and prosody was performed. Results: The prevalence of dysarthria in our MS cohort was 56% while the severity was generally mild and primarily consisted of a combination of spastic and ataxic components. Prosodic-articulatory disorder presenting with monopitch, articulatory decay, excess loudness variations and slow rate was the most salient. Speech disorders reflected subclinical motor impairment with 78% accuracy in discriminating between a subgroup of asymptomatic MS (EDSS < 2.0) and control speakers. Speech disorder severity was related to the severity of neurological involvement. Decreased articulation rate was moderately correlated to EDSS as well as all subtests of the multiple sclerosis functional composite. The strongest correlation was observed between irregular oral diadochokinesis and the 9-Hole Peg Test (r = -0.65, p < 0.001). Irregular oral diadochokinesis and excess loudness variations significantly separated pure pyramidal and mixed pyramidal-cerebellar MS subgroups. Conclusions: Automated speech analyses may provide valuable biomarkers of disease progression in MS as dysarthria represents common and early manifestation that reflects disease disability and underlying pyramidal-cerebellar pathophysiology.

Dualistic effect of pallidal deep brain stimulation on motor speech disorders in dystonia

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Ing. Tereza Tykalová, Ph.D., Fečíková, A., Šťastná, D., Urgošík, D., Jech, R.
  • Publikace: Brain Stimulation - Basic, Translational, and Clinical Research in Neuromodulation. 2018, 11(4), 896-903. ISSN 1935-861X.
  • Rok: 2018
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.brs.2018.03.007
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2018.03.007
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: Although pallidal deep brain stimulation (GPi-DBS) is an effective treatment for dystonia, it may cause important stimulation-induced side-effects such as hypokinetic dysarthria or stuttering. However, the reasons behind the occurrence of these side-effects remain unknown. Objective: To objectively investigate the impact of GPi-DBS on patients with dystonia on speech fluency, intelligibility, and key aspects of hyperkinetic and hypokinetic dysarthria. Methods: Speech was systematically evaluated in 19 dystonic patients with GPi-DBS. Each patient was tested twice within one day in both the GPi-DBS ON and GPi-DBS OFF stimulation conditions. A control sample of 19 matched healthy speakers underwent the same speech assessment. Results: We observed an improvement of hyperkinetic dysarthria symptoms in 47% and an aggravation of hypokinetic dysarthria symptoms in 26% of patients with the GPi-DBS switched ON. A higher stimulus intensity was found in a group of patients in whom the hypokinetic dysarthria worsened with the GPi-DBS ON when compared to other dystonic patients (p=0.02). Furthermore, we revealed a significant increase of dysfluent words in the GPi-DBS ON when compared to OFF condition (p=0.001) associated with the shorter distance of the active contact localization along the medio-lateral direction (r=-0.70, p=0.005). Conclusion: This study provides evidence of dualistic effects of GPi-DBS on speech in dystonia manifested as an improvement of hyperkinetic or a deterioration of hypokinetic dysarthria. Our findings suggest that lower stimulation parameters and placement of active contacts more laterally in the internal globus pallidus should be preferred to avoid the possible side effects of hypokinetic dysarthria and dysfluency.

Linear classification in speech-based objective differential diagnosis of Parkinsonism

  • Autoři: Li, G., Daoudi, K., Klempíř, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2018). IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), 2018. p. 5999-6003. ISSN 1520-6149. ISBN 9781538646588.
  • Rok: 2018
  • DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP.2018.8462681
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP.2018.8462681
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinsonism refers to Parkinsons disease (PD) and Atypical Parkinsonian syndromes (APS). Speech disorder is a common and early symptom in Parkinsonism which makes speech analysis a very important research area for the purpose of early diagnosis. Most of research have however focused on discrimination between PD and healthy controls. Such research does not take into account the fact that PD and APS syndromes are very similar in early disease stages. The main problem that has to be addressed first is then differential diagnosis: discrimination between PD and APS and within APS. This paper is a continuation of an earlier pioneer work in differential diagnosis where we mostly address the machine learning problem due to the small amount of training data. We show that classical linear and generalized linear models can provide interpretable and robust classifiers in term of accuracy and generalization ability.

P 104 - Head and hand tremor measurement and analysis for the differentiation between essential and dystonic tremors

  • Autoři: Krupička, R., Duspivová, T., Vítečková, S., Ulmanová, O., Hollý, P., Čejka, V., Szabó, Z., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Gait & Posture. 2018, 65 404-406. ISSN 0966-6362.
  • Rok: 2018
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2018.06.075
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2018.06.075
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Head tremor is a common clinical manifestation in essential tremor (ET) and can also occur as dystonic tremor (DT) in cervical dystonia. The clinical differentiation of head tremor due to ET and DT is not easy. Therefore, we developed instrumental methods using an accelerometer and an optical motion capture system to precisely measure and analyze head and hand tremor, and for distinguishing between ET and DT. Head tremor was measured with a Wireless XSens accelerometer and hand tremor by the Optitrack V120 Trio (MOCAP) and the tremor amplitude was computed. We included 24 patients fulfilling the criteria for ET (12 M, 12 F, mean age 58, SD 10) and 26 patients with cervical dystonia (5 M, 21 F mean age 64, SD 10). In supine position, visible head tremor disappeared in 5 out of 13 ET (38%) and in 8 out of 20 DT patients (40%). In ET patients, we found a strong correlation between the amplitudes of head tremor in sitting and supine position (rho=0.91, p<0.001). In contrast, in patients with DT, the correlation was weak (rho = 0.49, p = 0.01). Tremor of the upper limbs was significantly higher in the ET group, compared to DT (p < 0.001). Measurement of hand tremor with MOCAP confirmed the predicted difference in tremor of the upper limbs in patients with ET and DT. In the contrary, the analysis of head tremor amplitude did not confirm the hypothesis that head tremor disappears in supine position in patients with ET. The correlations show that the ET is just suppressed and depends on its amplitude. DT suppression is unpredictable.

Smartphone Allows Capture of Speech Abnormalities Associated With High Risk of Developing Parkinson's Disease

  • DOI: 10.1109/TNSRE.2018.2851787
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2018.2851787
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although smartphone technology provides new opportunities for the recording of speech samples in everyday life, its ability to capture prodromal speech impairment in persons with a high risk of developing Parkinson's disease (PD) has never been investigated. Speech data were acquired through a smartphone as well as a professional microphone with a linear frequency response from 50 participants with a rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder that are at a high risk of developing PD and related neurodegenerative disorders. Additionally, recordings of 30 newly diagnosed, untreated PD patients and 30 healthy participants were evaluated. Acoustic assessment of 11 speech dimensions representing the key aspects of hypokinetic dysarthria in the early stages of PD was performed. Smartphone allowed the detection of speech abnormalities in participants with a high risk of developing PD. Acoustic measurements related to fundamental frequency variability, duration of pause intervals, and rate of speech timing extracted from spontaneous speech were sufficiently sensitive to significantly separate groups (area under curve of 0.85 between PD and controls) and showed very strong correlation and reliability between the professional microphone and the smartphone. Speech-based biomarkers collected through smartphones may have the potential to revolutionize the diagnostic process in neurodegenerative diseases and improve stratification for future neuroprotective therapy in PD.

Acoustic evaluation of nasality in cerebellar syndromes

  • Autoři: Ing. Michal Novotný, Ph.D., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Spálenka, K., Klempíř, J., Horáková, D., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: INTERSPEECH 2017. Bochum: ISCA - International Speech Communication Association, 2017. p. 3132-3136. ISSN 1990-9772.
  • Rok: 2017
  • DOI: 10.21437/Interspeech.2017-381
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2017-381
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although previous studies have reported the occurrence of velopharyngeal incompetence connected with ataxic dysarthria, there is a lack of evidence related to nasality assessment in cerebellar disorders. This is partly due to the limited reliability of challenging analyses and partly due to nasality being a less pronounced manifestation of ataxic dysarthria. Therefore, we employed 1/3-octave spectra analysis as an objective measurement of nasality disturbances. We analyzed 20 subjects with multiple system atrophy (MSA), 13 subjects with cerebellar ataxia (CA), 20 subjects with multiple sclerosis (MS) and 20 healthy (HC) speakers. Although we did not detect the presence of hypernasality, our results showed increased nasality fluctuation in 65% of MSA, 43% of CA and 30% of MS subjects compared to 15% of HC speakers, suggesting inconsistent velopharyngeal motor control. Furthermore, we found a statistically significant difference between MSA and HC participants (p<0.001), and significant correlation between the natural history cerebellar subscore and neuroprotection in Parkinson plus syndromes - Parkinson plus scale and nasality fluctuations in MSA (r=0.51, p<0.05). In conclusion, acoustic analysis showed an increased presence of abnormal nasality fluctuations in all ataxic groups and revealed that nasality fluctuation is associated with distortion of cerebellar functions.

Automated analysis of connected speech reveals early biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease in patients with rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder

  • DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-00047-5
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-00047-5
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    For generations, the evaluation of speech abnormalities in neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been limited to perceptual tests or user-controlled laboratory analysis based upon rather small samples of human vocalizations. Our study introduces a fully automated method that yields significant features related to respiratory deficits, dysphonia, imprecise articulation and dysrhythmia from acoustic microphone data of natural connected speech for predicting early and distinctive patterns of neurodegeneration. We compared speech recordings of 50 subjects with rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD), 30 newly diagnosed, untreated PD patients and 50 healthy controls, and showed that subliminal parkinsonian speech deficits can be reliably captured even in RBD patients, which are at high risk of developing PD or other synucleinopathies. Thus, automated vocal analysis should soon be able to contribute to screening and diagnostic procedures for prodromal parkinsonian neurodegeneration in natural environments.

Comparative analysis of speech impairment and upper limb motor dysfunction in Parkinson's disease

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-016-1662-y
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-016-1662-y
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    It is currently unknown whether speech and limb motor effectors in Parkinson’s disease (PD) are controlled by similar underlying brain processes. Based on computerized objective analysis, the aim of this study was to evaluate potential correlation between speech and mechanical tests of upper limb motor function. Speech and upper limb motor tests were performed in 22 PD patients and 22 healthy controls. Quantitative acoustic analyses of eight key speech dimensions of hypokinetic dysarthria, including quality of voice, sequential motion rates, consonant articulation, vowel articulation, average loudness, loudness variability, pitch variability, and number of pauses, were performed. Upper limb movements were assessed using the motor part of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale, contactless three-dimensional motion capture system, blinded expert evaluation, and the Purdue Pegboard Test. Significant relationships were observed between the quality of voice assessed by jitter and amplitude decrement of finger tapping (r = 0.61, p = 0.003), consonant articulation evaluated using voice onset time and expert rating of finger tapping (r = 0.60, p = 0.003), and number of pauses and Purdue Pegboard Test score (r = 0.60, p = 0.004). The current study supports the hypothesis that speech impairment in PD shares, at least partially, similar pathophysiological processes with limb motor dysfunction. Vocal fold vibration irregularities appeared to be influenced by mechanisms similar to amplitude decrement during repetitive limb movements. Consonant articulation deficits were associated with decreased manual dexterity and movement speed, likely reflecting fine motor control involvement in PD.

Distinct patterns of imprecise consonant articulation among Parkinson's disease, progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2016.11.005
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2016.11.005
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Distinct speech characteristics that may aid in differentiation between Parkinson's disease (PD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and multiple system atrophy (MSA) remain tremendously under-explored. Here, the patterns and degree of consonant articulation deficits across voiced and voiceless stop plosives in 16 PD, 16 PSP, 16 MSA and 16 healthy control speakers were evaluated using acoustic and perceptual methods. Imprecise consonant articulation was observed across all Parkinsonian groups. Voice onset time of voiceless plosives was more prolonged in both PSP and MSA compared to PD, presumably due to greater severity of dysarthria and slower articulation rate. Voice onset time of voiced plosives was significantly shorter only in MSA, likely as a consequence of damage to cerebellar structures. In agreement with the reduction of pre-voicing, MSA manifested increased number of voiced plosives misclassified as voiceless at perceptual evaluation. Timing of articulatory movements may provide important clues about the pathophysiology of underlying disease. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Dysprosody Differentiate Between Parkinson’s Disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, and Multiple System Atrophy

  • DOI: 10.21437/Interspeech.2017-762
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2017-762
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson’s disease (PD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and multiple system atrophy (MSA) are distinctive neurodegenerative disorders, which manifest similar motor features. Their differentiation is crucial but difficult. Dysfunctional speech, especially dysprosody, is a common symptom accompanying PD, PSP, and MSA from early stages. We hypothesized that automated analysis of monologue could provide speech patterns distinguishing PD, PSP, and MSA. We analyzed speech recordings of 16 patients with PSP, 20 patients with MSA, and 23 patients with PD. Our findings revealed that deviant pause production differentiated between PSP, MSA, and PD. In addition, PSP showed greater deficits in speech respiration when compared to MSA and PD. Automated analysis of connected speech is easy to administer and could provide valuable information about underlying pathology for differentiation between PSP, MSA, and PD.

GABA spectra and remote distractor effect in progressive supranuclear palsy: A pilot study

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.neurol.2017.03.007
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurol.2017.03.007
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů, Analýza a interpretace biomedicínských dat
  • Anotace:
    Disturbances of the gamma-aminobutyric-acid (GABA) system have been suspected of contributing to the pathophysiology of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). The ability to rapidly resolve competitive action decisions, such as shifting the gaze to one particular stimulus rather than another, can be predicted by the concentration of GABA in the region of the frontal cortex relevant to eye movements. For this reason, our study measured GABA levels in seven PSP patients and eight healthy controls, using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and assessed the relationship of these measurements to the remote distractor effect (RDE), an eye-movement paradigm investigating competitive action decisions. No significant differences were found in either frontal-eye-field GABA levels or RDE between Distraction PSP patients and controls.

High-Accuracy Voice-Based Classification Between Patients With Parkinson’s Disease and Other Neurological Diseases May Be an Easy Task With Inappropriate Experimental Design

  • DOI: 10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2621885
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2621885
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Recently, based on voice cepstral analysis, (Benba et al, 2016) have reported discrimination between patientswith Parkinson’s disease and different neurological disorderswith high classificationaccuracyup to 90%. Using the same approach, wewere able to experimentally separate two groups of normal healthy speakers with 96% classification accuracy and showed that the method proposed by Benba et al. may not be appropriate for discrimination between different neurological diseases. In particular, voice cepstral analysis appears to be sensitive to specific speakers’ characteristics such as gender or age. Our findings emphasize several assumptions that can be considered as basic necessary conditions for research reporting speech data in progressive neurodegenerative diseases.

Automatic detection of Parkinson's disease in running speech spoken in three different languages

  • Autoři: Orozco-Arroyave, J. R., Honig, F., Arias-Londono, J. D., Vargas-Bonilla, J. F., Daqrouq, K., Skodda, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Noth, E.
  • Publikace: JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA. 2016, 139(1), 481-500. ISSN 0001-4966.
  • Rok: 2016
  • DOI: 10.1121/1.4939739
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4939739
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The aim of this study is the analysis of continuous speech signals of people with Parkinson's disease (PD) considering recordings in different languages (Spanish, German, and Czech). A method for the characterization of the speech signals, based on the automatic segmentation of utterances into voiced and unvoiced frames, is addressed here. The energy content of the unvoiced sounds is modeled using 12 mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) and 25 bands scaled according to the Bark scale. Four speech tasks comprising isolated words, rapid repetition of the syllables /pa/-/ta/-/ka/, sentences, and read texts are evaluated. The method proves to be more accurate than classical approaches in the automatic classification of speech of people with PD and healthy controls (HC). The accuracies range from 85% to 99% depending on the language and the speech task. Cross-language experiments are also performed confirming the robustness and generalization capability of the method, with accuracies ranging from 60% to 99%. This work comprises a step forward for the development of computer aided tools for the automatic assessment of dysarthric speech signals in multiple languages.

Diffusion tensor imaging in the characterization of multiple system atrophy

  • Autoři: Rulseh, A., Keller, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Syka, M., Brozova, H., Rusina, R., Havrankova, P., Zarubova, K., Malikova, H., Jech, R., Vymazal, J.
  • Publikace: Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment. 2016, 12 2181-2187. ISSN 1178-2021.
  • Rok: 2016
  • DOI: 10.2147/NDT.S109094
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S109094
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Purpose: Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a rare neurodegenerative disease that remains poorly understood, and the diagnosis of MSA continues to be challenging. We endeavored to improve the diagnostic process and understanding of in vivo characteristics of MSA by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Materials and methods: Twenty MSA subjects, ten parkinsonian dominant (MSA-P), ten cerebellar dominant (MSA-C), and 20 healthy volunteer subjects were recruited. Fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity maps were processed using tract-based spatial statistics. Diffusion data were additionally evaluated in the basal ganglia. A support vector machine was used to assess diagnostic utility, leave-one-out cross-validation in the evaluation of classification schemes, and receiver operating characteristic analyses to determine cutoff values. Results: We detected widespread changes in the brain white matter of MSA subjects; however, no group-wise differences were found between MSA-C and MSA-P subgroups. Altered DTI metrics in the putamen and middle cerebellar peduncles were associated with a positive parkinsonian and cerebellar phenotype, respectively. Concerning clinical applicability, we achieved high classification performance on mean diffusivity data in the combined bilateral putamen and middle cerebellar peduncle (accuracy 90.3%+/- 9%, sensitivity 86.5%+/- 11%, and specificity 99.3%+/- 4%). Conclusion: DTI in the middle cerebellar peduncle and putamen may be used in the diagnosis of MSA with a high degree of accuracy.

Dlouhodobá studie věkově závislých akustických charakteristik řeči

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Článek se zabývá dlouhodobou studií věkově závislých charakteristik akustických řeči v promluvách získaných z filmových databází zaznamenaných v letech 1985 až 2014. Věková závislost fonace je analyzována pomocí parametrů základní frekvence, jitteru a shimmeru. Pro posouzení artikulace je použito poměru formantů u vokálů a délka exploze palatálních souhlásek. Pro prozódii nebyly nalezeny žádné charakteristiky, které by byly použitelné na základě analýzy filmových archivů. Výsledky věkových závislostí jsou v souladu s předpoklady a závěry uvedenými v literatuře. Tento pilotní projekt potvrzuje možnost tvorby hodnotné studie z veřejně dostupných zdrojů.

Effects of dopaminergic replacement therapy on motor speech disorders in Parkinson's disease: longitudinal follow-up study on previously untreated patients

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-016-1515-8
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-016-1515-8
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although speech disorders represent an early and common manifestation of Parkinson’s disease (PD), little is known about their progression and relationship to dopaminergic replacement therapy. The aim of the current study was to examine longitudinal motor speech changes after the initiation of pharmacotherapy in PD. Fifteen newly-diagnosed, untreated PD patients and ten healthy controls of comparable age were investigated. PD patients were tested before the introduction of antiparkinsonian therapy and then twice within the following 6 years. Quantitative acoustic analyses of seven key speech dimensions of hypokinetic dysarthria were performed. At baseline, PD patients showed significantly altered speech including imprecise consonants, monopitch, inappropriate silences, decreased quality of voice, slow alternating motion rates, imprecise vowels and monoloudness. At follow-up assessment, preservation or slight improvement of speech performance was objectively observed in two-thirds of PD patients within the first 3–6 years of dopaminergic treatment, primarily associated with the improvement of stop consonant articulation. The extent of speech improvement correlated with l-dopa equivalent dose (r = 0.66, p = 0.008) as well as with reduction in principal motor manifestations based on the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (r = −0.61, p = 0.02), particularly reflecting treatment-related changes in bradykinesia but not in rigidity, tremor, or axial motor manifestations. While speech disorders are frequently present in drug-naive PD patients, they tend to improve or remain relatively stable after the initiation of dopaminergic treatment and appear to be related to the dopaminergic responsiveness of bradykinesia.

Hypernasality associated with basal ganglia dysfunction: evidence from Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease

  • DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2530
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2530
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background. Although increased nasality can originate from basal ganglia dysfunction, data regarding hypernasality in Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD) are very sparse. The aim of the current study was to analyze acoustic and perceptual correlates of velopharyngeal seal closure in 37 PD and 37 HD participants in comparison to 37 healthy control speakers. Methods. Acoustical analysis was based on sustained phonation of the vowel /i/ and perceptual analysis was based on monologue. Perceptual analysis was performed by 10 raters using The Great Ormond Street Speech Assessment '98. Acoustic parameters related to changes in a 1/3-octave band centered on 1 kHz were proposed to reflect nasality level and behavior through utterance. Results. Perceptual analysis showed the occurrence of mild to moderate hypernasality in 65% of PD, 89% of HD and 22% of control speakers. Based on acoustic analyses, 27% of PD, 54% of HD and 19% of control speakers showed an increased occurrence of hypernasality. In addition, 78% of HD patients demonstrated a high occurrence of intermittent hypernasality. Further results indicated relationships between the acoustic parameter representing fluctuation of nasality and perceptual assessment (r D 0:51, p<0:001) as well as the Unified Huntington Disease Rating Scale chorea composite subscore (r D0:42, pD0:01). Conclusions. In conclusion the acoustic assessment showed that abnormal nasality was not a common feature of PD, whereas patients with HD manifested intermittent hypernasality associated with chorea.

Quantitative assessment of motor speech abnormalities in idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.sleep.2015.07.030
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2015.07.030
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Objective: Patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) are at substantial risk developing Parkinson’s disease (PD) or related neurodegenerative disorders. Speech is an important indicator of motor function and movement coordination and therefore may be an extremely sensitive early marker of changes due to prodromal neurodegeneration. Methods: Speech data were acquired from 16 RBD subjects and 16 age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects. Objective acoustic assessment of 15 speech dimensions representing various phonatory, articulatory and prosodic deviations was performed. Statistical models were applied to characterize speech disorders in RBD and estimate sensitivity and specificity in differentiating between RBD and control subjects. Results: Some form of speech impairment was revealed in 88% of RBD subjects. Articulatory deficits were the most prominent findings in RBD. In comparison to controls, RBD group showed significant alteration in irregular alternating motion rates (p=0.009) and articulatory decay (p=0.01). The combination of four distinctive speech dimensions including aperiodicity, irregular alternating motion rates, articulatory decay and dysfluency led to 96% sensitivity and 79% specificity in discriminating between RBD and control subjects. Speech impairment was significantly more pronounced in RBD subjects with the motor score of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale greater than 4 points when compared to other RBD individuals. Conclusion: Simple quantitative speech motor measures may be suitable for the reliable detection of prodromal neurodegeneration in subjects with RBD, and therefore may provide important outcomes for future therapy trials.

Robustní detektor základní frekvence hlasivek pro dysartrickou řeč

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Studie prezentuje robustní metodu pro detekci základní frekvence hlasivek (F0) u dysartrické řeči. Pro účely validace byly vytvořeny repliky fonací na základě parametrů obálka F0, jitter, shimmer a harmonic-to-noise ratio, které byly získány pomocí ročně kontrolovaného měření programem PRAAT z rozsáhlé databáze 345 nahrávek pokrývající všechny základní fonační nedostatky dysartrické řeči. Metoda je založena na výběru maximálně věrohodného kandidáta F0 ze spektrální analýzy vzhledem k pravděpodobnostnímu modelu F0 predikovaného Kalmánovým filtrem. Metoda je schopna detekovat intervaly skoků F0 o oktávu dolů pomocí kepstrální analýzy. Při porovnání s konvenčními metodami (PRAAT, DYPSA, RAPT, PEFAC, SHRP) dosáhla prezentovaná metoda vysoké přesnosti detekce.

Speech changes after coordinative training in patients with cerebellar ataxia: A pilot study

  • DOI: 10.1007/s10072-015-2379-7
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2379-7
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Objectives: Although rehabilitative training is a necessary adjunct in the management of gait ataxia, it remains unknown whether the possible beneficial effect of intensive coordinative training may translate to activities of daily living, which are closely connected with postural alignment. The aim of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of a 2-week intensive coordinative motor training on speech production. Methods: Speech and motor performances in a cohort of 10 individuals with cerebellar degeneration were examined three times; before the introduction of training; directly and four weeks after the last training session. Each patient was instructed to perform a speaking task of fast syllable repetition and monologue. Objective acoustic analyses were used to investigate six key aspects of speech production disturbed in ataxic dysarthria including accuracy of consonant articulation, accuracy of vowel articulation, irregular alternating motion rates, prolonged phonemes, slow alternating motion rates and inappropriate segmentation. Results: We found that coordinative training had a mild beneficial effect on speech in cerebellar patients. Immediately after the last training session, slight speech improvements were evident in all 10 patient. Furthermore, follow-up assessment performed 4 weeks later revealed that 90% of the patients showed better speech performance than before initiation of the therapy.

Towards an Automatic Monitoring of the Neurological State of Parkinson's Patients From Speech

  • Autoři: Orozco-Arroyave, J.R., Vasquez-Correa, J.C., Honig, F., Arias-Londono, J.D., Vargas-Bonilla, J.F., Skodda, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Noth, E.
  • Publikace: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). Piscataway: IEEE Signal Processing Society, 2016. p. 6490-6494. ISSN 1520-6149. ISBN 978-1-4799-9988-0.
  • Rok: 2016
  • DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP.2016.7472927
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP.2016.7472927
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The suitability of articulation measures and speech intelligibility is evaluated to estimate the neurological state of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). A set of measures recently introduced to model the articulatory capability of PD patients is considered. Additionally, the speech intelligibility in terms of the word accuracy obtained from the Googler speech recognizer is included. Recordings of patients in three different languages are considered: Spanish, German, and Czech. Additionally, the proposed approach is tested on data recently used in the INTERSPEECH 2015 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge. According to the results, it is possible to estimate the neurological state of PD patients from speech with a Spearman’s correlation of up to 0.72 with respect to the evaluations performed by neurologist experts.

Automatic detection of voice onset time in dysarthric speech

  • DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP.2015.7178790
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP.2015.7178790
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although a number of speech disorders reflect varying involvement of brain areas, recently published automatic speech analyses have primarily been limited to hypokinetic dysarthria in Parkinson's disease (PD). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to provide an automatic algorithm suitable for the assessment of voice onset time (VOT) in various dysarthria types.

Automatic evaluation of speech rhythm instability and acceleration in dysarthrias associated with basal ganglia dysfunction

  • DOI: 10.3389/fbioe.2015.00104
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2015.00104
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Speech rhythm abnormalities are commonly present in patients with different neurodegenerative disorders. These alterations are hypothesized to be a consequence of disruption to the basal ganglia circuitry involving dysfunction of motor planning, programming and execution, which can be detected by a syllable repetition paradigm. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to design a robust signal processing technique that allows the automatic detection of spectrally-distinctive nuclei of syllable vocalizations and to determine speech features that represent rhythm instability and acceleration. A further aim was to elucidate specific patterns of dysrhythmia across various neurodegenerative disorders that share disruption of basal ganglia function. Speech samples based on repetition of the syllable /pa/ at a self-determined steady pace were acquired from 109 subjects, including 22 with Parkinson's disease (PD), 11 progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), 9 multiple system atrophy (MSA), 24 ephedrone-induced parkinsonism (EP), 20 Huntington's disease (HD), and 23 healthy controls. Subsequently, an algorithm for the automatic detection of syllables as well as features representing rhythm instability and rhythm acceleration were designed. The proposed detection algorithm was able to correctly identify syllables and remove erroneous detections due to excessive inspiration and nonspeech sounds with a very high accuracy of 99.6%. Instability of vocal pace performance was observed in PSP, MSA, EP and HD groups. Significantly increased pace acceleration was observed only in the PD group. Although not significant, a tendency for pace acceleration was observed also in the PSP and MSA groups. Our findings underline the crucial role of the basal ganglia in the execution and maintenance of automatic speech motor sequences. We envisage the current approach to become the first step towards the development of acoustic technologies allowing automated assessment of rhythm in dysarthrias.

Characterization Methods for the Detection of Multiple Voice Disorders: Neurological, Functional, and Laryngeal Diseases

  • Autoři: Orozco-Arroyave, J.R., Belalcazar-Bolanos, E.A., Arias-Londono, J.D., Vargas-Bonilla, J.F., Skodda, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Daqrouq, K., Honig, F., Noth, E.
  • Publikace: IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. 2015, 19(6), 1820-1828. ISSN 2168-2194.
  • Rok: 2015
  • DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2015.2467375
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/JBHI.2015.2467375
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    This paper evaluates the accuracy of different characterization methods for the automatic detection of multiple speech disorders. The speech impairments considered include dysphonia in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD), dysphonia diagnosed in patients with different laryngeal pathologies (LP), and hypernasality in children with cleft lip and palate (CLP). Four different methods are applied to analyze the voice signals including noise content measures, spectral-cepstralmodeling, nonlinear features, andmeasurements to quantify the stability of the fundamental frequency. These measures are tested in six databases: three with recordings of PD patients, two with patients with LP, and one with children with CLP. The abnormal vibration of the vocal folds observed in PD patients and in people with LP is modeled using the stability measures with accuracies ranging from 81% to 99% depending on the pathology. The spectral-cepstral features are used in this paper to model the voice spectrum with special emphasis around the first two formants. These measures exhibit accuracies ranging from 95% to 99% in the automatic detection of hypernasal voices, which confirms the presence of changes in the speech spectrum due to hypernasality. Noise measures suitably discriminate between dysphonic and healthy voices in both databases with speakers suffering from LP. The results obtained in this study suggest that it is not suitable to use every kind of features to model all of the voice pathologies; conversely, it is necessary to study the physiology of each impairment to choose the most appropriate set of features.

Comparison of developmental and neurogenic stuttering

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although the full etiological nature of developmental stuttering is still unknown, the key role of disturbed basal ganglia function along with the role of dopamine system have been thoroughly discussed. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to survey the characteristics of neurogenic stuttering based on patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and compared them to the characteristics of developmental stuttering. The database consists of 14 persons with developmental stuttering (pDS) and 14 patients with idiopathic PD. In addition, 14 sex-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited. Each participant was instructed to perform two-minutes long monolog on given topic. Analysis of dysfluency was conducted according to the Lidcombe behavioral taxonomy of stuttering. Our results showed that pDS subjects manifested significantly more vocal blocs (p 0.01) and filling words (p 0.05) compared to PD patients. On the other hand, the neurogenic stuttering of PD was mainly characterized by incomplete syllable repetitions (p 0.05) and prolongations (p 0.01) as compared to HC. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that there seems to be more differences rather than similarities between neurogenic and developmental stuttering.

Effect of dopaminergic medication on speech dysfluency in Parkinson's disease: a longitudinal study

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-015-1363-y
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-015-1363-y
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although speech dysfluencies have been hypothesized to be associated with abnormal function of dopaminergic system, the effects of dopaminergic medication on speech fluency in Parkinson's disease (PD) have not been systematically studied. The aim of the present study was, therefore, to investigate the long-term effect of dopaminergic medication on speech fluency in PD. Fourteen de novo PD patients with no history of developmental stuttering and 14 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited. PD subjects were examined three times; before the initiation of dopaminergic treatment and twice in following 6 years. The percentage of dysfluent words was calculated from reading passage and monolog. The amount of medication was expressed by cumulative doses of L-dopa equivalent. After 3-6 years of dopaminergic therapy, PD patients exhibited significantly more dysfluent events compared to healthy subjects as well as to their own speech performance before the introduction of dopaminergic therapy. In addition, we found a strong positive correlation between the increased occurrence of dysfluent words and the total cumulative dose of L-dopa equivalent. Our findings indicate an adverse effect of prolonged dopaminergic therapy contributing to the development of stuttering-like dysfluencies in PD. These findings may have important implication in clinical practice, where speech fluency should be taken into account to optimize dopaminergic therapy.

Fast vergence eye movements are disrupted in Parkinson's disease: A video-oculography study

  • Autoři: Hanuška, J., Bonnet, C., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Mgr. Tomáš Sieger, Ph.D., Jech, R., Rivaud-Péchoux, S., Vidailhet, M., Gaymard, B., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Parkinsonism & Related Disorders. 2015, 21(7), 797-799. ISSN 1353-8020.
  • Rok: 2015
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2015.04.014
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.parkreldis.2015.04.014
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů, Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Background: Blurred near vision is a common non-motor symptom in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), however detailed characterization of vergence eye movements (VEM) is lacking. Methods: Convergence and divergence were examined in 18 patients with PD and 18 control subjects using infrared video-oculography. VEM metrics analyzed included latency, velocity and accuracy, in vertical and horizontal planes. Results: The latency of convergence and divergence was significantly increased in PD subjects. Additionally, divergence was slow and hypometric, while other convergence metrics were similar to controls. Conclusion: We provide evidence in favor of disrupted VEM in PD.

Grunting in a Genetically Modified Minipig Animal Model for Huntington’s Disease – a Pilot Experiments

  • DOI: 10.14735/amcsnn20152S61
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.14735/amcsnn20152S61
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Huntington’s disease (HD) is an autosomal-dominant neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the impairment of voluntary and involuntary movements, behavioral disorders and cognitive decline. Besides the main motor symptoms, voice and speech disorders have been documented in a large majority of patients with HD. The animal model of pigs is often used in preclinical studies. Although there are obvious differences in the anatomy of the articulation organs between pigs and humans, the same trends in pathophysiological mechanisms can be expected in both grunting and human phonation. The main aim of the study was therefore to design a suitable experiment that would allow for acquisition of a sufficiently long recording of grunting from as many pigs as possible. The second goal was to perform the final version of the experiment in all available pigs and to evaluate the amount and quality of the acquired recordings. The database consists of 17 HD transgenic minipigs and 16 healthy siblings. Tested variants of the experiment, performed on subgroup of four sows, were divided into four subgroups: (a) positive – feeding, (b) positive – sound stimulation, (c) negative – hindering in movement, (d) negative – unpleasant touch. The evaluation of the quality of the elicited recording was performed using audio software where pure pig grunting was selected and all acoustic artefacts deleted. The best results were reached using the experiment in which: (i) a recording device is put on the pig’s body, (ii) the pig is left alone for few minutes in the pen in order to calm down, and (iii) a person enters the room and tries to offer the pig food while walking backwards. As a result, the pig follows the person and grunts. Sufficiently long (20 single grunts or more) and clear recordings were received from 24 out of 33 pigs (73%). The realisation of the experiment is therefore possible.

Hypernazalita v dysartrických promluvách

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Práce se zabývá výskytem hypernazality v dyasrtrických promluvách pacientů trpících Parknsonovou nemocí a Huntingtonovou nemocí.

Rychlost a rytmus řeči u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Cílem práce bylo zhodnotit rychlost a rytmus mluveného projevu ovlivněného Parkinsonovou nemocí. Vyhodnocení bylo provedeno na databázi vyvážené podle věku i pohlaví. Databáze sestávala z 35 mluvčích s diagnostikovanou Parkinsonovou nemocí a kontrolní skupiny 35 zdravých mluvčích. Každý účastník studie namluvil 2 nahrávky standardizovaného čteného textu a 1 nahrávku monologu. Všechny druhé nahrávky čteného textu byly ručně segmentovány pro účely hodnocení automatické segmentace. Byl navržen automatický algoritmus segmentace řeči založený modelu gausovské směsi řeči. Princip algoritmu spočíval v postupné separaci základních složek řeči pomocí EM-algoritmu. Algoritmus je schopen rozlišit řeč na znělou řeč / neznělou řeč / respirace / pauzy. Na základě výstupu segmentace byla řeč ohodnocena navrženou bankou 12 příznaků. Algoritmus prokázal úspěšnost 60-90%. Účinnost respirace se pohybovala v mezích 80- 95%. Navržený detektor respirace je dosud jediný svého druhu. Podařilo se nalézt statisticky významná postižení všech čtyř řečových dimenzí – respirace, fonace, artikulace i prosodie. Byla vypozorována nižší rychlost produkce pauz a zrychlování produkce pauz, doprovázené postupným snižováním kvality artikulace v průběhu promluvy a snižováním poměru řeč a pauza i celkově zhoršenou artikulací, fonací i narušenou respirací.

Spatial and temporal characteristics of gait as outcome measures in multiple sclerosis (EDSS 0 to 6.5)

  • Autoři: Lizrova Preiningerova, J., Novotná, K., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Suchá, L., Růžička, E., Havrdová, E.
  • Publikace: Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation. 2015, 12(14), 1-7. ISSN 1743-0003.
  • Rok: 2015
  • DOI: 10.1186/s12984-015-0001-0
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-015-0001-0
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Background: Gait impairment represents one of the most common and disabling symptom of multiple sclerosis. Quantification of the gait is an important aspect of clinical trials. In order to identify which temporal or spatial parameters of gait could be used as outcome measures in interventional studies of patients with different levels of disability, we evaluated characteristics of these parameters in MS patients across the whole spectrum of mobility from EDSS 0 to 6.5. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of spatial and temporal parameters of gait at self selected speed and at fast speed of walking in 284 patients with multiple sclerosis (108 men, mean age 38 years ± SD 10.8 years, range 18–64) divided into seven levels of disability (EDSS 0 to 1.5, EDSS 2.0 to 2.5, EDSS 3.0 to 3.5, EDSS 4.0 to 4.5, EDSS 5.0 to 5.5, EDSS 6.0, EDSS 6.5). Results: The velocity of gait decreases with increasing EDSS levels. Hovewer, the spatio-temporal parameters of gait that are involved in this process differ across the EDSS levels. The step length is decreased at higher EDSS levels up to the EDSS 6.0, but was not different between EDSS 6.0 and 6.5. The step time is significantly longer at EDSS 6.0 and 6.5, while the step length remains the same at those levels. The increase in percentage of double support time becomes statistically significant at EDSS 3.0-3.5 and continues to increase until EDSS 6.5. Variability of step time, step length or step width did not show significant difference between studied EDSS levels. Conclusions: There is no single spatio-temporal parameter of gait (other than velocity of gait) that would show significant differences among all levels of EDSS. The step length reflects shortening of steps at lower EDSS levels (2.0 to 6.0), and percentage of double support time better reflects changes at higher EDSS levels 3.0 – 6.5. Gait variability is not associated with disability in MS and therefore would not be a suitable outcome measure. Th

Speech disorders reflect differing pathophysiology in Parkinson's disease, progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00415-015-7671-1
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-015-7671-1
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although speech disorder is frequently an early and prominent clinical feature of Parkinson's disease (PD) as well as atypical parkinsonian syndromes (APS) such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and multiple system atrophy (MSA), there is a lack of objective and quantitative evidence to verify whether any specific speech characteristics allow differentiation between PD, PSP and MSA. Speech samples were acquired from 77 subjects including 15 PD, 12 PSP, 13 MSA and 37 healthy controls. The accurate differential diagnosis of dysarthria subtypes was based on the quantitative acoustic analysis of 16 speech dimensions. Dysarthria was uniformly present in all parkinsonian patients but was more severe in PSP and MSA than in PD. While PD speakers manifested pure hypokinetic dysarthria, ataxic components were more affected in MSA while PSP subjects demonstrated severe deficits in hypokinetic and spastic elements of dysarthria. Dysarthria in PSP was dominated by increased dysfluency, decreased slow rate, inappropriate silences, deficits in vowel articulation and harsh voice quality whereas MSA by pitch fluctuations, excess intensity variations, prolonged phonemes, vocal tremor and strained-strangled voice quality. Objective speech measurements were able to discriminate between APS and PD with 95% accuracy and between PSP and MSA with 75% accuracy. Dysarthria severity in APS was related to overall disease severity (r=0.54, p=0.006). Dysarthria with various combinations of hypokinetic, spastic and ataxic components reflects differing pathophysiology in PD, PSP and MSA. Thus, motor speech examination may provide useful information in the evaluation of these diseases with similar manifestations.

Voiced/unvoiced transitions in speech as a potential bio-marker to detect Parkinson's disease

  • Autoři: Orozco-Arroyave, JR, Honig, F., Arias-Londono, JD., Vargas-Bonilla, JF., Skodda, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Noth, E.
  • Publikace: INTERSPEECH 2015. Bochum: ISCA - International Speech Communication Association, 2015. p. 95-99. ISSN 2308-457X.
  • Rok: 2015
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Several studies have addressed the automatic classification of speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and healthy controls (HC). Most of the studies are based on speech recordings of sustained vowels, isolated words, and single sentences. Only few investigations have considered read texts and/or spontaneous speech. This paper addresses two main questions still open regarding the automatic analysis speech in patients with PD, (a) "Is it possible to classify PD patients and HC through running speech signals in multiple languages", and (b) "where is the information to discriminate between speech recordings of PD patients and HC" In this paper speech recordings of read texts and monologues spoken in three different languages are considered. The energy content of the borders between voiced and unvoiced sounds is modeled. According to the results with read texts it is possible to achieve accuracies ranging from 91% to 98% depending on the language. With respect to the results on monologues, the accuracies are above 98% in all of the three languages. The presence of discriminant information in the voiced/unvoiced and unvoiced/voiced transitions is validated here, evidencing the problems of PD patients to stop/start the vocal folds movement during the production of running speech.

Využití transgenních mini-prasátek jako modelu pro studium Huntingtonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Huntingtonova nemoc (HN) je vzácné dědičné neurodegenerativní onemocnění mozku charakteristické nekoordinovanými trhavými pohyby těla a snížením mentálních schopností. Vedle hlavních motorických příznaků se poruchy hlasu a řeči vyskytují až u 90 % pacientů. Pro studium nemoci, lze též využít transgenních mini-prasátek. Ačkoli hlasové a artikulační ústrojí mezi prasátkem a člověkem se liší, dají se očekávat podobné trendy v patofyziologii mezi lidských hlasem a chrochtáním prasátek. Cílem studie je návrh vhodného experimentu, který by umožnil nahrání dostatečně dlouhého záznamu chrochtání prasátek od co největšího počtu jedinců. Testované varianty experimentu byly rozděleny do tří podskupin: (a) pozitivní - jídlo, (b) pozitivní - zvuková stimulace, (c) negativní - ignorace. Z výsledků experimentu vyplývá, že nejvíce se osvědčil experiment s pozitivní stimulací jídlem ve známé nádobě s pomocnou zvukovou stimulací. Získání nahrávek s dostatečným počtem zachrochtání je tedy realizovatelné.

A distinct variant of mixed dysarthria reflects parkinsonism and dystonia due to ephedrone abuse

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Megrelishvili, M., Bonnet, C., Okujava, M., Brožová, H., Khatiashvili, I., Sekhniashvili, M., Janelidze, M., Tolosa, E., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Journal of Neural Transmission. 2014, 121(6), 655-664. ISSN 0300-9564.
  • Rok: 2014
  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-014-1158-6
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-014-1158-6
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    A distinctive alteration of speech has been reported in patients suffering from ephedrone-induced parkinsonism. However, an objective assessment of dysarthria has not been performed in ephedrone users. We studied 28 young Caucasian men from Georgia with a previous history of ephedrone abuse and compared them to 25 age-matched healthy controls. Speech examination, brain MRI, and NNIPPS-Parkinson plus scale were performed in all patients. The accurate differential diagnosis of dysarthria subtypes was based on the quantitative acoustic analyses of 15 speech dimensions. We revealed a distinct variant of mixed dysarthria with a combination of hyperkinetic and hypokinetic components representing the altered motor programming of dystonia and bradykinesia in ephedrone-induced parkinsonism. According to acoustic analyses, all patients presented at least one affected speech dimension, whereas dysarthria was moderate in 43 % and severe in 36 % of patients. Further findings indicated relationships between motor subscores of dystonia and bradykinesia and speech components of loudness (r = -0.54, p<0.01), articulation (r = 0.40, p<0.05), and timing (r = -0.53, p<0.01). In ephedrone-induced parkinsonism a prominent mixed hyperkinetic–hypokinetic dysarthria occurs that appears related to marked dystonia and bradykinesia and probably reflects manganese induced toxic and neurodegenerative damage to the globus pallidus internus and substantia nigra.

Acoustic Investigation of Stress Patterns in Parkinson's Disease

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2013.07.001
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2013.07.001
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Objectives. Although reduced stress is thought to be one of the most deviant speech dimensions in hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD), the mechanisms of stress production in PD have not been thoroughly explored by objective methods. The aim of the present study was to quantify the effect of PD on prosodic characteristics and to describe contrastive stress patterns in parkinsonian speech. Methods. The ability of 20 male speakers with early PD and 16 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs) to signal contrastive stress was investigated. Each participant was instructed to unnaturally emphasize five key words while reading a short block of text. Acoustic analyses were based on the measurement of pitch, intensity, and duration. In addition, an innovative measurement termed the stress pattern index (SPI) was designed to mirror the effect of all distinct acoustic cues exploited during stress production. Results. Although PD patients demonstrated a reduced ability to convey contrastive stress, they could still notably increase pitch, intensity, and duration to emphasize a word within a sentence. No differences were revealed between PD and HC stress productions using the measurements of pitch, intensity, duration, and intensity range. However, restricted SPI and pitch range were evident in the PD group. Conclusions. A reduced ability to express stress seems to be the distinctive pattern of hypokinetic dysarthria, even in the early stages of PD. Because PD patients were able to consciously improve their speech performance using multiple acoustic cues, the introduction of speech therapy may be rewarding.

Automatic detection of Parkinson's disease fromwords uttered in three different languages

  • Autoři: Orozco-Arroyave, J.R., Hönig, F., Arias-Londoño, J.D., Vargas-Bonilla, J.F., Skodda, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Nöth, E.
  • Publikace: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2014. BAIXAS: International Speech and Communication Association, 2014. p. 1573-1577. ISSN 2308-457X.
  • Rok: 2014
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    About 90% of the people with Parkinson's disease (PD) develop speech impairments such as monopitch, monoloudness, imprecise articulation, and other symptoms. There are several studies addressing the problem of the automatic detection of PD from speech signals in order to develop computer aided tools for the assessment and monitoring of the patients. Recent works have shown that it is possible to detect PD from speech with accuracies above 90%; however, it is still unclear whether it is possible to make the detection independent of the spoken language. This paper addresses the automatic detection of PD considering speech recordings of three languages: German, Spanish and Czech. According to the results it is possible to classify between speech of people with PD and healthy controls (HC) with accuracies ranging from 84% to 99%, depending on the utterance.

Automatic Evaluation of Articulatory Disorders in Parkinson's Disease

  • DOI: 10.1109/TASLP.2014.2329734
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/TASLP.2014.2329734
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although articulatory deficits represent an important manifestation of dysarthria in Parkinson’s disease (PD), the most widely used methods currently available for the automatic evaluation of speech performance are focused on the assessment of dysphonia. The aim of the present study was to design a reliable automatic approach for the precise estimation of articulatory deficits in PD. Twenty-four individuals diagnosed with de novo PD and twenty-two age-matched healthy controls were recruited. Each participant performed diadochokinetic tasks based upon the fast repetition of /pa/-/ta/-/ka/ syllables. All phonemes were manually labeled and an algorithm for their automatic detection was designed. Subsequently, 13 features describing six different articulatory aspects of speech including vowel quality, coordination of laryngeal and supralaryngeal activity, precision of consonant articulation, tongue movement, occlusion weakening, and speech timing were analyzed. In addition, a classification experiment using a support vector machine based on articulatory features was proposed to differentiate between PD patients and healthy controls. The proposed detection algorithm reached approximately 80% accuracy for a 5 ms threshold of absolute difference between manually labeled references and automatically detected positions. When compared to controls, PD patients showed impaired articulatory performance in all investigated speech dimensions (p < 0.05). Moreover, using the six features representing different aspects of articulation, the best overall classification result attained a success rate of 88% in separating PD from controls. Imprecise consonant articulation was found to be the most powerful indicator of PD-related dysarthria. We envisage our approach as the first step towards development of acoustic methods allowing the automated assessment of articulatory features in dysarthrias.

Automatické hodnocení pauz v řeči u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Studie se zabývá metodou pro hodnocení pauz v řeči zdravé a řeči postižené vlivem Parkinsonovy nemoci. Realizace metody spočívala v návrhu klasifikátoru řeč / pauza a sady příznaků pro popis fyziologické schopnosti produkce pauz. Klasifikátor je založen na postupné separaci složek řeči EM-algoritmem. Klasifikátor je schopen rozlišit hlásky / konsonanty / pauzu / respiraci jako samostatné třídy. Informační zisk klasifikátoru byl zvýšen přizpůsobením hranic okének poloze spektrálních změn. Ze sady 22 příznaku projevilo 15 příznaků statistickou významnost (p<0.05) k odlišení parkinsonického a zdravého mluvčího. Známé příznaky poukazující na pomalost a současné zrychlování řeči u Parkinsonovy nemoci se podařilo vyjádřit automatickou metodou. Nově byly objeveny příznaky vyššího ovlivnění pauz respirací a vyšší zastoupení respirace v pauzách.

Characteristics and occurrence of speech impairment in Huntington's disease: possible influence of antipsychotic medication

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-014-1229-8
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-014-1229-8
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Although motor speech impairment is a common manifestation of Huntington’s disease (HD), its description remains limited. The aim of the current study was therefore to estimate the occurrence and characteristics of speech disorder in HD and to explore the influence of antipsychotic medication on speech performance. Speech samples, including reading passage and monologue, were acquired from 40 individuals diagnosed with HD and 40 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Objective acoustic analyses were used to evaluate key aspects of speech including vowel articulation, intensity, pitch and timing. A predictive model was constructed to detect the occurrence and most prominent patterns of speech dysfunction in HD. We revealed that 93 % of HD patients manifest some degree of speech impairment. Decreased number of pauses, slower articulation rate, imprecise vowel articulation and excess intensity variations were found to be the most salient patterns of speech dysfunction in HD. We further demonstrated that antipsychotic medication may induce excessive loudness and pitch variations perceptually resembling excess patterns of word stress, and may also accentuate general problems with speech timing. Additionally, antipsychotics induced a slight improvement of vowel articulation. Specific speech alterations observed in HD patients indicate that speech production may reflect the pathophysiology of the disease as well as treatment effects, and may therefore be considered a valuable marker of functional disability in HD.

Eye Movements in Ephedrone-Induced Parkinsonism

  • Autoři: Bonnet, C., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Megrelishvili, M., Mgr. Tomáš Sieger, Ph.D., Matoušková, O., Okujava, M., Brožová, H., Nikolai, T., Hanuška, J., Kapianidze, M., Mikeladze, N., Botchorishvili, N., Khatiashvili, I., Janelidze, M., Serranová, T., Fiala, O., Roth, J., Bergquist, J., Jech, R., Rivaud-Péchoux, S., Gaymard, B., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: PLoS ONE. 2014, 9(8), 1-8. ISSN 1932-6203.
  • Rok: 2014
  • DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0104784
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104784
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů, Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Patients with ephedrone parkinsonism (EP) show a complex, rapidly progressive, irreversible, and levodopa non-responsive parkinsonian and dystonic syndrome due to manganese intoxication. Eye movements may help to differentiate parkinsonian syndromes providing insights into which brain networks are affected in the underlying disease, but they have never been systematically studied in EP. Horizontal and vertical eye movements were recorded in 28 EP and compared to 21 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, and 27 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects using standardized oculomotor tasks with infrared videooculography. EP patients showed slow and hypometric horizontal saccades, an increased occurrence of square wave jerks, long latencies of vertical antisaccades, a high error rate in the horizontal antisaccade task, and made more errors than controls when pro- and antisaccades were mixed. Based on oculomotor performance, a direct differentiation between EP and PD was possible only by the velocity of horizontal saccades. All remaining metrics were similar between both patient groups. EP patients present extensive oculomotor disturbances probably due to manganese-induced damage to the basal ganglia, reflecting their role in oculomotor system.

Hypernazalita v dysartrických promluvách

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    V soucasne dobe, je mereni hypernazality venovana znacna pozornost zejmena pri zkoumani strukturnich vad mekkeho patra (rozstep patra, pripadne poskozeni z duvodu chirurgickeho zakroku). Tento fakt vychazi ze skutecnosti, ze pri strukturnim poskozeni si mohou byt autori jisti, ze hodnoti prave vliv hypernazality. Clem teto prace je aplikovat poznatky ziskane pri hodnocen akustickych vlastnosti promluv pacientu se strukturni vadou patra na dysartricke promluvy, ve kterych muze dochazet k projevum tzv. halo efektu. K tomuto jevu dochazi, kdyz dalsi vlivy maskuji dopady hypernazality. Pro ucely prace vyuzvame tri skupiny sestavajici se z 29 zdravych ucastniku pouzitych jako normy, 38 ucastniku trpicich Parkinsonovou nemoci (PN) jako zastupcu hypokineticke dysartrie a 40 ucastniku trpicich Huntingtonovou nemoc (HN) jako zastupcu hyperkineticke dysartrie. Pro analyzu dat je vyuzita analyza tretino-oktavovych frekvencnich pasem. V pripade obou dysartrickych skupin byly nalezeny statisticky nejvyznamnejsi rozdily v pasmu kolem 1000 Hz (PN: p < 0; 05, HN: p < 0; 001).

Phonatory Dysfunction as a Preclinical Symptom of Huntington Disease

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Saft, C., Schlegel, U., Hoffman, R., Skodda, S.
  • Publikace: PLoS ONE. 2014, 9(11), 1-7. ISSN 1932-6203.
  • Rok: 2014
  • DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0113412
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113412
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Purpose: Although dysphonia has been shown to be a common sign of Huntington disease (HD), the extent of phonatory dysfunction in gene positive premanifest HD individuals remains unknown. The aim of the current study was to explore the possible occurrence of phonatory abnormalities in prodromal HD. Method: Sustained vowel phonations were acquired from 28 premanifest HD individuals and 28 healthy controls of comparable age. Data were analysed acoustically for measures of several phonatory dimensions including airflow insufficiency, aperiodicity, irregular vibration of vocal folds, signal perturbations, increased noise, vocal tremor and articulation deficiency. A predictive model was built to find the best combination of acoustic features and estimate sensitivity/specificity for differentiation between premanifest HD subjects and controls. The extent of voice deficits according to a specific phonatory dimension was determined using statistical decision making theory. The results were correlated to global motor function, cognitive score, disease burden score and estimated years to disease onset. Results: Measures of aperiodicity and increased noise were able to significantly differentiate between premanifest HD individuals and controls (p,0.01). The combination of these aspects of dysphonia led to a sensitivity of 91.5% and specificity of 79.2% to correctly distinguish speakers with premanifest HD from healthy individuals. Some form of disrupted phonatory function was revealed in 68% of our premanifest HD subjects, where 18% had one affected phonatory dimension and 50% showed impairment of two or more dimensions. A relationship between pitch control and cognitive score was also observed (r =20.50, p = 0.007). Conclusions: Phonatory abnormalities are detectable even the in premotor stages of HD. Speech investigation may have the potential to provide functional biomarkers of HD and could be included in future clinical trials and therapeutic interventions.

Souvislosti mezi koktavostí a medikací u pacientů s Parkinsonovou nemocí

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinsonova nemoc (PN) je neurodegenerativní onemocnění, které přímo souvisí s úbytkem nervových buněk v části mozku nazvané substantia nigra. Pro zmírnění příznaků PN, zejména zlepšení hybnosti, se nasazuje lék zvaný levodopa, který se v mozku přeměňuje na dopamin. Získaná (neurogenická) koktavost vzniká až v dospělém věku jako důsledek neurologických událostí, jako například zranění hlavy, výskyt nádoru, mozková mrtvice či jako důsledek roztroušené sklerózy nebo Parkinsonovi nemoci. Přesná příčina koktavosti je dosud neznámá, zdá se však, že zde hrají roli jak genetické, tak neuropsychologické faktory. Velké pozornost vědecké veřejnosti je též věnována souvislosti mezi špatnou funkcí bazálních ganglií a výskytem koktavosti. Jedna z předchozích studií [Wu, J., 1997] se též zabývala teorií, že zvýšené množství dopaminu v mozku může souviset s výskytem koktavosti. Hlavním cílem této práce je proto hledat souvislosti mezi mírou koktavosti a dávkou levodopy u 14 pacientů s Parkinsonovou nemocí, kteří v dětství netrpěli vývojovou koktavostí. Míra koktavosti je vyhodnocena na základě čteného textu a monologu. Množství užívané levodopy je zjištěno z klinických záznamů lékařů. Součástí příspěvku je také prezentace výsledků a interpretace závěrů.

Využití akustických analýz pro hodnocení hlasu a řeči u Huntingtonovy choroby

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Huntingtonova nemoc (HN) je vzácné dědičné neurodegenerativní onemocnění, které je charakteristické nekoordinovanými trhavými pohyby těla. Mezi hlavní motorické příznaky patří chorea, bradykineze a ve vyšších stádiích pak i rigidita, dystonie a ztráta stability. Poruchy hlasu a řeči, označované jako hyperkinetická dysartrie, jsou dalším běžným projevem HN a rozvíjejí se v průběhu nemoci až u 90% pacientů. Mezi charakteristické deficity vyskytující se v hlasu osob s HN patří tzv. voice break (nízkofrekvenční segmenty fonace, ve kterých dochází ke zhruba jedno oktávovému poklesu proti běžnému hlasu) a vocal arrest (segmenty fonace, ve kterých dochází k úplnému zastavení funkce hlasivek). Nepřesná artikulace hlásek u HN je charakterizována zejména poklesem F1a, F2a a F2i a zvýšením F2u frekvence. Tyto změny odrážejí sníženou schopnost pacientů s HN pohyboval mluvidly, zejména jazykem, v rozsahu odpovídajícímu zdravým normám a mohou vést k výraznému snížení srozumitelnosti řeči. Mezi nejčastěji pozorované poruchy v oblasti prosodie patří zpomalená rychlost řeči, větší počet pauz, neschopnost udržet jednoduchý rytmus, neschopnost vyjádřit větný důraz a zvýšená variabilita v hlasitosti a délce slabik . Akustické analýzy jsou neinvazivní, objektivní, citlivá a jednoduchá metoda pro hodnocení hlasu a řeči u neurologických onemocnění. Matlab může být vhodným programem pro návrh algoritmů pro automatickou detekci řečových parametrů.

Acoustic Findings of Voice Disorders in Huntington's Disease Compared to Parkinson's Disease

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    One common finding in Huntington's disease (HD) is related to phonatory disruptions that can be perceptually characterized by harshness, strained strangled voice quality, and pitch fluctuations. These alterations of voice occur mainly as a consequence of underlying involuntary contractions, variable muscle tone, or even tremor of laryngeal musculature. Recently, several new acoustic analysis methods have been introduced to capture different aspects of these phonatory abnormalities. In this report, we summarize objective acoustic metrics suitable for assessment of phonatory dysfunction and provide their classification accuracy in separation between patients with HD and healthy controls. For this purpose, data consists of 272 phonations collected from 34 individuals with HD and 34 healthy controls. As impairment of phonatory function in HD was found across all investigated measurements, voice analysis may potentially serve as a marker of disease progression.

Bayesian changepoint detection for the automatic assessment of fluency and articulatory disorders

  • DOI: 10.1016/j.specom.2012.08.003
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2012.08.003
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The accurate changepoint detection of different signal segments is a frequent challenge in various worldwide application domains. With regard to speech utterances, the changepoints are related to significant spectral changes, mostly represented by the borders between two phonemes. The main aim of this study is to design a novel Bayesian autoregressive changepoint detector (BACD) and test its feasibility in the evaluation of fluency and articulatory disorders. The originality of the proposed method consists in its normalising of a posteriori probability using Bayesian evidence and the designing of a recursive algorithm for reliable practice. For further evaluation of the BACD, we used data from (a) 118 people with various severity of stuttering to assess the extent of speech disfluency using a short reading passage, and (b) 24 patients with early Parkinson’s disease and 22 healthy speakers for evaluation of articulation accuracy using fast syllable repetition. Subsequently, we designed two measures for each type of disorder. While speech disfluency has been related to greater distances between spectral changes, dysarthric inaccurate articulation has instead been associated with lower spectral changes. These findings have been confirmed by statistically significant differences which were achieved in separating several degrees of disfluency and distinguishing healthy from parkinsonian speakers. In addition, a significant correlation between the automatic assessment of speech fluency and the judgment of human experts was obtained. In conclusion, our designed method provides a cost-effective, easy applicable and freely available evaluation of the speech disorders as well as other areas requiring reliable techniques for changepoint detection. In a more modest scope, BACD may be used in diagnosis of disease severity, monitoring treatment, and support for therapists’ evaluation.

Charakteristiky promluv pacientů s Parkinsonovou nemocí extrahované z řečové diadochokinetické úlohy

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Přestože je Parkinsonova nemoc v současné době jedním z nejčastějších neurodegenerativních onemocnění, existuje pouze symptomatická léčba a studie ukazují, že k diagnóze může dojít až 10 let po výskytu prvních příznaků.

Evaluation of speech impairment in early stages of Parkinson's disease: a prospective study with the role of pharmacotherapy

  • DOI: 10.1007/s00702-012-0853-4
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-012-0853-4
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Despite the initial reports showing beneficial effects of dopaminergic treatment on speech in Parkinson's disease (PD), more recent studies based upon valid measurements have not approved any improvement of speech performance under pharmacotherapy. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of treatment initiation on the progression of speech impairment in PD, using novel evaluation criteria. Nineteen de novo patients with PD were tested and retested within 2 years after the introduction of antiparkinsonian therapy. As controls, 19 age-matched individuals were recorded. Speech examination included sustained phonation, fast syllable repetition, reading text, and monolog. Quantitative acoustic analyses of the key aspects of speech based on Gaussian kernel distribution, statistical decision-making theory, and healthy speech observation were used to assess the improvement or deterioration of speech. A trend for speech performances to improve was demonstrated after treatment mainly in quality of voice, intensity variability, pitch variability, and articulation. The treatment-related improvement differed in various aspects of speech for individual PD patients. Improvements in vowel articulation and pitch variability correlated with treatment-related changes in bradykinesia and rigidity, whereas voice quality and loudness variability improved independently. Using a novel approach of acoustic analysis and advanced statistics, improvements in speech performance can be demonstrated in PD patients after the introduction of antiparkinsonian therapy. Moreover, changes in speech articulation and pitch variability appear to be related with dopaminergic responsiveness of bradykinesia and rigidity. Therefore, speech may be a valuable marker of disease progression and treatment efficacy in PD.

Formantové charakteristiky během vyjádření důrazu u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Přestože hypokinetická dysartrie u Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN) se projevuje v mnoha řečových dimenzích, snížená schopnost vyjádření důrazu je považována za druhý nejvíce postižený řečový aspekt. Této studie se zúčastnilo 20 osob mužského pohlaví s diagnózou PN v brzké fázi a 16 zdravých jedinců srovnatelného věku. Cílem této práce, bylo ověřit vhodnost měření prvních tří formantových frekvencí a délky samohlásky pro hodnocení schopnosti vyjádřit důraz u osob s PN. Během nahrávání byl každý účastník studie požádán o přečtení krátkého úryvku textu s cílem nepřirozeně zdůraznit 5 klíčových slov vyznačených v textu. Pro akustické analýzy bylo využito čtyř řečových parametrů; délka samohlásky, první formantová frekvence, druhá formantová frekvence a třetí formantová frekvence. Pro statistické vyhodnocení bylo využito programu MATLAB. Pro nalezení statisticky významných rozdílů mezi skupinami PN a KS byla použita vícesměrná analýza rozptylu. Výsledky ukázaly, že přestože osoby s PN nepřesně artikulují, jsou-li požádáni o důrazné přečtení textu, dokáží cíleně zlepšit svůj řečový výkon a přiblížit se ke zdravým jedincům. Tento efekt byl zřetelný u všech měření s výjimkou měření délky samohlásky a nejvýrazněji se projevil u měření třetího formantu.

Grafické rozhraní pro přípravu a kontrolu dat

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    V současné době dochází k stále užšímu propojování různých vědních obrů. Tento trend přináší vyšší nároky na kompatibilitu využívaných nástrojů. Proto bylo navrženo grafické rozhraní, které usnadňuje a urychluje pořizování a kontrolu dat využívaných v dalších analýzách.

Horizontal and Vertical Eye Movement Metrics: What is Important?

  • Autoři: Bonnet, C., Hanuška, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Rivaud-Péchoux, S., Mgr. Tomáš Sieger, Ph.D., Majerová, V., Serranová, T., Gaymard, B., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Clinical Neurophysiology. 2013, 124(11), 2216-2229. ISSN 1388-2457.
  • Rok: 2013
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2013.05.002
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2013.05.002
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů, Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Objective: To assist other eye movement investigators in the design and analysis of their studies.Methods: We examined basic saccadic eye movements and smooth pursuit in the horizontal and vertical directions with video-oculography in a group of 145 healthy subjects between 19 and 82 years of age.Results: Gender and education level did not influence eye movement metrics. With age, the latency of leftward and vertical pro- and antisaccades increased (p < 0.001), velocity of upward prosaccades decreased (p < 0.001), gain of rightward and upward prosaccades diminished (p < 0.001), and the error rate of antisaccades increased (p < 0.001). Prosaccades and antisaccades were influenced by the direction of the target, resulting in a right/left and up/down asymmetry. The skewness of the saccade velocity pro-file was stable throughout the lifespan, and within the range of saccades analyzed in the present study, correlated with amplitude and duration only for antisaccades (p < 0.001).Conclusions: Some eye movement metrics must be separated by the direction of movement, others according to subject age, while others may be pooled.Significance: This study provides important information for new oculomotor laboratories concerning the constitution of subject groups and the analysis of eye movement metrics.

Imprecise vowel articulation as a potential early marker of Parkinson's disease: Effect of speaking task

  • DOI: 10.1121/1.4816541
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4816541
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The purpose of this study was to analyze vowel articulation across various speaking tasks in a group of 20 early Parkinson’s disease (PD) individuals prior to pharmacotherapy. Vowels were extracted from sustained phonation, sentence repetition, reading passage, and monologue. Acoustic analysis was based upon measures of the first (F1) and second (F2) formant of the vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, vowel space area (VSA), F2i/F2u and vowel articulation index (VAI). Parkinsonian speakers manifested abnormalities in vowel articulation across F2u, VSA, F2i/F2u, and VAI in all speaking tasks except sustained phonation, compared to 15 age-matched healthy control participants. Findings suggest that sustained phonation is an inappropriate task to investigate vowel articulation in early PD. In contrast, monologue was the most sensitive in differentiating between controls and PD patients, with classification accuracy up to 80%. Measurements of vowel articulation were able to capture even minor abnormalities in speech of PD patients with no perceptible dysarthria. In conclusion, impaired vowel articulation may be considered as a possible early marker of PD. A certain type of speaking task can exert significant influence on vowel articulation. Specifically, complex tasks such as monologue are more likely to elicit articulatory deficits in parkinsonian speech, compared to other speaking tasks.

Objective Acoustic Quantification of Phonatory Dysfunction in Huntington's Disease

  • DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065881
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065881
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Purpose: Although speech motor changes are reported as a common sign of Huntington’s disease (HD), the most prominent signs of voice dysfunction remain unknown. The aim of the current study was to explore specific changes in phonatory function in subjects with HD. Method: 34 subjects with HD and 34 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were examined. Participants performed sustained vowel phonation for subsequent analyses of airflow insufficiency, aperiodicity, irregular vibrations of vocal folds, signal perturbations, increased noise, and articulation deficiency. In total, 272 phonations were collected and 12 voice parameters were extracted. Subsequently, a predictive model was built to find the most salient patterns of voice disorders in HD. The results were also correlated with disease severity according to the Unified HD Rating Scale (UHDRS) motor score. Results: Subjects with HD showed deterioration in all investigated phonatory functions. Irregular pitch fluctuations, sudden phonation interruption, increased noise, and misplacement of articulators were found to be most significant patterns of phonatory dysfunction in HD (p < 0.001). The combination of these four dysphonia aspects contributed to the best classification performance of 94.1 % (sensitivity: 95.1 %; specificity: 93.2 %) in the separation of HD patients from healthy participants. Our results further indicated stronger associations between sudden phonation interruption and voluntary components of the UHDRS (r = - 0.48, p < 0.01) and between misplacement of articulators and involuntary components of the UHDRS (r = 0.52, p < 0.01). Conclusions: Our configuration of phonatory features can detect subtle voice abnormalities in subjects with HD. As impairment of phonatory function in HD was found to parallel increasing motor involvement, a qualitative description of voice dysfunction may be helpful to gain better insight into the pathophysiology of the vocal mechanism.

Acoustic Analysis of Stress Pattern in Parkinson's disease

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Dysprosody in Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by several symptoms. One of these symptoms is disability to produce precise stress pattern. A group of 20 untreated patients in the early stages of PD was compared to a group of 17 healthy age-matched controls to quantify possible acoustic changes in speech production secondary to PD. All participants produced a standardized speaking task of contrastive stress. The standard used measurements of amplitude, fundamental frequency and duration were performed. Moreover, the novel measurement of Stress Pattern Index (SPI) that combines amplitude, fundamental frequency, and duration characteristics was designed. The measurements of F0 range, Intensity range, Duration, and SPI differentiate between PD and healthy controls (HC) across many conditions in the group of stressed and unstressed tokens. On the other hand, only SPI was sufficiently sensitive to distinguish between PD and HC group for stress tokens that was normalized by normal reading tokens. To summarize, acoustic changes of prosodic stress appear to occur from early stages of PD.

Akustické analýzy důrazu u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Poruchy v prosodii u Parkonsonovy nemoci jsou charakteristické několika symptomy. Jeden z nich je neschopnost vyjádřit důraz.

Akustické analýzy emocí u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Poruchy řeči u Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN), označované jako hypokinetická dysartrie, se projevují zhoršením řeči ve všech řečových subsystémech, tj. fonaci, respiraci, artikulaci a prozodii. Vývoj hypokinetické dysartrie v průběhu nemoci je předpokládán u 70 - 90 % osob trpících PN a její přítomnost byla prokázána již v brzkých stádiích nemoci. U pacientů s PN dochází v jejich promluvách k těmto charakteristickým příznakům: nepřesná artikulace, snížená melodičnost, snížená hlasitost, nepravidelnosti v držení rytmu, chrapot, dyšnost a další projevy, které snižují celkovou srozumitelnost řeči. Přestože poruchy řeči u PN se mohou vyskytovat individuálně, tj. pouze v některých subsystémech, zhoršení v oblasti prozodie bývá považováno za nejvýraznější.

Akustické analýzy nestability rytmu u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Poruchy prosodie u Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN) jsou charakteristické změnami v základní hlasivkové frekvenci, amplitudě a časování řeči. Problémy s časováním řeči se pak projevují mimo jiné zhoršenou schopností přesného vnímání a vyjádření rytmu. Této studie se zúčastnilo 18 osob s diagnózou PN v brzké fázi a 16 zdravých jedinců srovnatelného věku. Cílem studie bylo vyhodnocení deficitů v řeči, které vznikající v důsledku rozvoje PN. Každý účastník studie byl požádán o rytmické přečtení krátkého textu o čtyřech rýmech dle předem stanoveného rytmu referenční nahrávky.

Akustické analýzy poruch hlasu a řeči u onemocnění centrální nervové soustavy

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Řada onemocnění centrální nervové soustavy (CNS) je doprovázena poruchami hlasu a řeči, často již od brzkých stádií nemoci. U pacientů s poruchami komunikačních schopností je tak negativně ovlivněna kvalita jejich života jak v sociální tak i v pracovní oblasti. Pacienti mají problémy s uplatněním na trhu práce a také stoupají náklady na jejich zdravotní péči, což má v důsledku negativní dopad na národní ekonomiku.

Akustické analýzy řeči u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinsonova nemoc je pomalu progresivní onemocnění nervového systému, které celosvětově postihuje více než 8 miliónů jednotlivců...

ALGORITMY DETEKCE ŘEČOVÝCH PATOLOGIÍ NA ZÁZNAMECH PRODLOUŽENÝCH FONACÍ

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Základní parametrem hlasu je základní hlasivková frekvence (f0), pomocí které jsme schopni určovat ostatní řečové parametry, používané k detekci řečových patologií. Mezi tyto parametry patří jitter (frekvenční nestabilita), shimmer (amplitudová nestabilita) a odstup harmonické od šumu (HNR). Tyto parametry dále slouží k určení kvality a charakteristiky hlasu mluvčího.

Analýza patologického hlasu a řeči v laboratoři SAMI ČVUT

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Problematika analýzy a zpracování řečového signálu je na katedře teorie obvodů ČVUT FEL systematicky řešena od počátku devadesátých let minulého století.

Artikulace samohlásek u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Dysartrie u Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN) je vícerozměrná porucha řeči postihující různé aspekty jako jsou respirace, fonace, artikulace a prozodie. Nepřesná artikulace samohlásek je jedním z hlavních důvodů snížené srozumitelnosti řeči u pacientů s výskytem PN. Předchozí studie ukázaly významnost kinematických a akustických měření pro hodnocení artikulace samohlásek u parkinsoniků. Nedávný výzkum také potvrdil důležitost měření založených na bázi artikulace samohlásek při monitorování efektů léčby. Cílem této studie je akustická analýza artikulace samohlásek u brzké neléčené PN.

AUTOMATIC SEGMENTATION OF PHONEMES DURING THE FAST REPETITION OF (/PA/-/TA/-/KA/) SYLLABLES IN A SPEECH AFFECTED BY HYPOKINETIC DYSARTHRIA

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Hypokinetic dysarthria is a common manifestation of Parkinson's disease (PD). Articulation characteristics can provide useful information to distinguish dysarthric speakers from healthy subjects and monitor the severity of disease and treatment effects. The aim of this study was to design an algorithm for automatic segmentation of consonants and vowels based upon a rapid steady /pa/-/ta/-/ka/ syllable repetition.

Automatic Speech Evaluation of Parkinson's Disease

  • Autoři: Bocklet, T., Steidl, S., Noth, E., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Czech-German Workshop on Speech Pathology and Biological Signals - Proceedings. Praha: ČVUT FEL, Katedra teorie obvodů, 2012. pp. 12-15. ISBN 978-80-01-05164-1.
  • Rok: 2012
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson's disease is degenerative disorder of central nervous system which causes motor and non-motor deficits. Motor symptoms include shaking, rigidity, problems with movement, and speech.

Automatické hledání významných pozic v Parkinsonických promluvách založených na rychlém opakováni slabik /pa/ - /ta/ - /ka/

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Práce se zabývá využitím programového prostředí Matlab pro zpracování pa- tologických promluv pacientů trpících Parkinsonovou nemocí (PN).

Automatické hodnocení poruch artikulace založené na rychlém opakování slabik u pacientů trpících Parkinsonovou nemocí

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    V současné době je Parkinsonova nemoc druhé nejběžnější neurodegenerativní onemocnění. které začne být klinicky zřejmé až po projevení jednoho ze čtyř základních motorických symptomů.

Dopaminergic effects on speech impairment in early Parkinson's disease

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Czech-German Workshop on Speech Pathology and Biological Signals - Proceedings. Praha: ČVUT FEL, Katedra teorie obvodů, 2012. pp. 35-38. ISBN 978-80-01-05164-1.
  • Rok: 2012
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Dysarthria is a common manifestation of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). In addition to the main motor symptoms, it is estimated that up to 90 % of PD patients develop hypokinetic dysarthria in the course of their illness.

Estimation of fundamental frequency in pathological speech

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Automatic detection of speech pathology can help with early detection of speech pathology and with the analysis of the therapy progress. The basic speech parameter is the fundamental frequency (f0), which shows the frequency of vocal cord vibration.

Evaluation of Parkinsonian speech attributes obtained from utterances based upon the fast /pa/ - /ta/ - /ka/ syllables repetition

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after the Alzheimer's disease and with the aging of the worldwide population, the higher incidence is predicted. In 70 % - 90 % of PD cases, the hypokinetic dysarthria is manifested as a prodromal syndrom.

HODNOCENÍ HYPOKINETICKÝCH PROMLUV U PACIENTŮ S PARKINSONOVOU NEMOCÍ POMOCÍ VOICE ONSET TIME

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinsonovou nemocí (PN) trpí přes osm milionů lidí a v České republice je diagnostikováno mezi deseti a dvanácti tisíci nemocných. Mezi nejznámější projevy Parkinsonovy nemoci patří nekontrolovatelný tremor, akinesie nebo bradykineze, svalová rigidita a charakteristický shrbený postoj. Zároveň studie ukázaly, že se u 70%-90% případů projevují patologie řeči, zejména hypokinetická dysartrie.

Acoustic analysis of voice and speech characteristics in early untreated Parkinson's disease

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., prof. Ing. Roman Čmejla, CSc., Růžičková, H., Klempíř, J., Majerová, V., Picmausová, J., Roth, J., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications. Florencie: Universita di Firenze, 2011. p. 181-184. 612.78 (ed. 20). ISBN 978-88-6655-009-9.
  • Rok: 2011
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson's disease (pd) is a neurological illness characterized by progressive lost of dopaminergic neurons, primarily in the substantia nigra pars compacta. changes in speech associated with hypokinetic dysarthria are a common manifestation in patients with idiopathic PD. The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of automated acoustic measures for the identification of voice and speech disorders in PD.

Acoustic Assessment of Voice and Speech Disorders in Parkinson's Disease Through Quick Vocal Test

  • DOI: 10.1002/mds.23680
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.23680
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    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.

Acoustic markers of speech degradation in early untreated Parkinson's disease

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., prof. Ing. Roman Čmejla, CSc., Růžičková, H., Klempíř, J., Majerová, V., Picmausová, J., Roth, J., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Proceedings of Forum Acusticum 2011. Madrid: European Acoustics Association, 2011. p. 2725-2730. Danish Acoustical Society. ISSN 2221-3767. ISBN 978-84-694-1520-7.
  • Rok: 2011
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurological illness associated with a variety of motor deficits and non-motor deficits involving areas such as speech, mood, behaviour, thinking, and sensation. The PD-related vocal impairment results from the involvement of various speech subsystems including respiration, phonation, articulation, and prosody. The abnormalities in these speech subsystems are traditionally assessed using several acoustic measurements. Signal processing algorithms, in turn, offer an objective method for precise evaluation of speech performance from recorded signals. In this paper, we study the disordered speech of people with early PD who have not undergone pharmacotherapy treatment.

Assessment of voice and speech impairment

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The main aim of this project is the evaluation of voice and speech disorders in the field of several areas including dysarthria of Parkinson's disease, children dysphasia, stuttering, and speech dysfluency. The project deals with creation of speech databases, labelling several types of utterances, acoustic analysis, design and development of signal processing algorithms for automatic evaluation of speech features, design of appropriate classifiers, but also collaboration with speech-language pathologists in assessment of quality of speech and with neurologist in assessment of patients' global motor impairment. The research in the area of speech pathology has a crucial role to play in both theoretical and practical issues of developing and improving speech treatment across a range of diseases and conditions. The theoretical results yield essential knowledge for multidisciplinary science development in areas of acoustic, neurology, and linguistics.

Automatická segmentace hlásek při rychlém opakování slabik (/pa/ /ta/ /ka/) u hypokinetické dysartrie

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Hypokinetic dysarthria is a common manifestation of Parkinson's disease (PD). Articulation characteristics can provide useful information to distinguish dysarthric speakers from healthy subjects and monitor the severity of disease and treatment effects.

Detection of Persons with Parkinson's Disease by Acoustic, Vocal, and Prosodic Analysis

  • Autoři: Bocklet, T., Noth, E., Stemmer, G., Růžičková, H., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Proceedings of the Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Workshop 2011. Piscataway: IEEE Signal Processing Society, 2011. p. 478-483. ISBN 978-1-4673-0367-5.
  • Rok: 2011
  • DOI: 10.1109/ASRU.2011.6163978
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ASRU.2011.6163978
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    70% to 90% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) show an affected voice. Various studies revealed, that voice and prosody is one of the earliest indicators of PD. The issue of this study is to automatically detect whether the speech/voice of a person is affected by PD. We employ acoustic features, prosodic features and features derived from a two-mass model of the vocal folds on different kinds of speech tests: sustained phonations, syllable repetitions, read texts and monologues. Classification is performed in either case by SVMs. A correlation-based feature selection was performed, in order to identify the most important features for each of these systems. We report recognition results of 91% when trying to differentiate between normal speaking persons and speakers with PD in early stages with prosodic modeling. With acoustic modeling we achieved a recognition rate of 88% and with vocal modeling we achieved 79%. After feature selection these results could reatly be improved. But we expect those results to be too optimistic. We show that read texts and monologues are the most meaningful texts when it comes to the automatic detection of PD based on articulation, voice, and prosodic evaluations. The most important prosodic features were based on energy, pauses and F0. The masses and the compliances of spring were found to be the most important parameters of the two-mass vocal fold model.

Hodnocení vokalických parametrů u patologických hlasů

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    In this paper we present usage of the two novel speech fundamental frequency (f0) detection methods for sustained phonations to assess other vocal parameter such as jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). These voice parameters are commonly used to detect the speaker's voice characteristics and his voice quality. The aim of the work is to design the algorithm for detecting these vocal parameters, regarding to the robustness and automatization with minimisation of external parameters set-up. The results of particular parameters are compared with commonly used software Praat. The comparison of results between Praat and our designed vocal parameters were 83% for jitter, 88% for shimmer and 94% for HNR.

Komplexní měření plicních funkcí s využitím spirometrie

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Mezi základní parametry neinvazivních měření plicních funkcí patří plicní ventilace (kapacita a objem plic), maximální výdechový objem (usilovný výdech) a maximální volní ventilace (hluboké dýchání). Motivací této práce je laboratorní úloha určená pro výuku studentů biomedicínského inženýrství ČVUT FEL v předmětu Biologické signály. Pro všechna měření byl využit spirometr z profesionálního měřícího zařízení Biopac Student Lab a následně byly vyvinuty vlastní jednoduché algoritmy pro automatickou extrakci parametrů ze signálů ve vývojovém prostředí Matlab.

Objectification of dysarthria in Parkinson's disease using Bayes theorem

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., prof. Ing. Roman Čmejla, CSc., Růžičková, H., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS International Conference on SIGNAL PROCESSING, ROBOTICS and AUTOMATION. Athens: World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society, 2011. pp. 165-169. Zoran Bojkovic, Janusz Kacprzyk, nikos Mastorakis, Valeri Mladenov, Roberto Revetria, Lotfi A. Zadeh, Alexandr Zemliak. ISSN 1792-8192. ISBN 978-960-474-276-9.
  • Rok: 2011
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    This paper presents an assessment of vocal impairment for separating healthy persons from patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). We have recently shown that deterioration of speech performances in PD speakers is notable from an early stage of the disease, even before starting pharmacotherapy. In this study, we present the potential of the simple Bayes rule to reveal changes in degradable speech performance in the course of PD-related dysarthria. The various speech data were recorded from 23 speakers with recently diagnosed PD and 23 healthy speakers. It has been found that 19 various acoustic measurements are able to differentiate PD significantly from healthy speakers. Subsequently, the Bayes theorem was applied to each of these measurements. As a result, the 21 PD patients and 21 healthy people were correctly classified according to their group. The Bayes theorem thus confirms its feasibility for identifying the features of the impaired voice.

Quantitative acoustic measurements for characterization of speech and voice disorders in early untreated Parkinson's disease

  • DOI: 10.1121/1.3514381
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3514381
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    An assessment of vocal impairment is presented for separating healthy people from persons with early untreated Parkinson's disease (PD). This study's main purpose was to (a) determine whether voice and speech disorder are present from early stages of PD before starting dopaminergic pharmacotherapy, (b) ascertain the specific characteristics of the PD-related vocal impairment, (c) identify PD-related acoustic signatures for the major part of traditional clinically used measurement methods with respect to their automatic assessment, and (d) design new automatic measurement methods of articulation.On the basis of objective acoustic measures, statistical decision-making theory, and validation from practicing speech therapists, it has been demonstrated that 78% of early untreated PD subjects indicate some form of vocal impairment. The speech defects thus uncovered differ individually in various characteristics including phonation, articulation, and prosody.

Robust pitch detection algorithms for estimation of fundamental frequency of prolonged vowels phonations at pathological voices

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    This paper presents a design for two novel methods of speech fundamental frequency (f0) detection in pathological voices. The methods are tested on the database of vowelsustained phonation. One method is based on the detection of maxima and the other on signal filtration with band pass. Compared to other well known f0 detection methods, our algorithms are designed with respect to speech pathology detection. Moreover, the designed methods support detection of the other voice parameters, such as jitter, shimmer and harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR). The comparison of our results with results generated by the help of the Praat algorithm reaches a high value of correspondence: for the maximum method, the accuracy is 88,4 % and for the pass band method it is 83,9 %.

Robustní algoritmy detekce špiček pro odhad základní hlasivkové frekvence prodloužených fonací samohlásek u patologických hlasů

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    This paper presents design of two new methods of speech fundamental frequency (f0) detection for vowel sustained phonations and the detection method, which use cross-corelation to detect f0, is tested. The algorithm consists of certain preprocessing and processing methods. The first method is based on the detection of maxima and the second method is based on band pass filtration. In comparison with the other commonly used f0 detection methods, our algorithms are designed with respect to speech pathology detection. These methods lead to detection of the other voice parameters such as jitter, shimmer and harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR). The results of this study are compared with database, which is labeled by the help of Praat algorithm. The results for maximum method succeed at 88.4% and for pass band method at 83.9%. The detection leads to create self-automated method, which detect robustly f0.

The Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology: Web-based multimedia enabled interactive simulations

  • Autoři: Kofránek, J., Matoušek, S., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Stodůlka, P., Privitzer, P., Matejak, M., Tribula, M.
  • Publikace: Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine. 2011, 104(2), 143-153. ISSN 0169-2607.
  • Rok: 2011
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2010.12.007
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2010.12.007
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The paper is a presentation of the current state of development for the Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology (Atlas). Our main aim is to provide a novel interactive multimedia application that can be used for biomedical education where (a) simulations are combined with tutorials and (b) the presentation layer is simplified while the underlying complexity of the model is retained. The development of the Atlas required the cooperation of many professionals including teachers, system analysts, artists, and programmers. During the design of the Atlas, tools were developed that allow for component-based creation of simulation models, creation of interactive multimedia and their final coordination into a compact unit based on the given design. The Atlas is a freely available online application, which can help to explain the function of individual physiological systems and the causes and symptoms of their disorders.

Analýza hlasu v laboratorních úlohách při výuce studentů biomedicínského inženýrství

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Studenti biomedicínského inženýrství ČVUT FEL se v předmětu Biologické signály setkávají s laboratorní úlohou "Analýza hlasu", kde mají možnost se prakticky seznámit se základním hlasivkovým tónem, jeho parametry a detekcí. S použitím jednoduchých robustních algoritmů v prostředí MATLAB provádí analýzu hlasivkového tónu, zobrazují a hodnotí fonetogram a prostřednictvím Klattova kaskádního syntezátoru studují vliv formantů při produkci a percepci samohlásek.

Complex permittivity measurement of substrates using ring resonator

  • Pracoviště: Katedra elektromagnetického pole, Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    This paper deals with a complex permittivity measurement of dielectric substrates for planar circuits using ring resonator. This method is based on measurement of transmission and reflection coefficients of a transmission-type ring resonator with capacity coupling. Dielectric constant and the dissipation factor can be measured at wide frequency band by adjusting base resonant frequency of a ring resonator. Required parameters could be simply calculated according to information in this paper.

Evaluation of dysphonia in untreated Parkinsons disease

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Analýza a zpracování řečových a biologických signálů - sborník prací 2010. Praha: České vysoké učení technické v Praze, 2010. pp. 78-84. ISBN 978-80-01-04680-7.
  • Rok: 2010
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive lost of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. In addition to the most ostensible motor symptoms such as tremor, many patients with PD develop non-motor deficits in speech known as hypokinetic dysarthria. The disorders of voice and speech in Parkinson's disease result from the involvement of one or more speech subsystems including respiration, phonation, articulation, and prosody. The deficits in phonation characterized as dysphonia is one of the most salient features of PD speech impairment. This study thus investigates the signs of dysphonia in untreated patients with PD in comparison with healthy control participants. Speech data was collected using sustained phonations from 46 Czech native speakers, 24 with PD. Then, 7 representative measurements of dysphonia were selected.

Hodnocení důrazu, emocí, rytmu, artikulační rychlosti a pravidelnosti u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Cílem této práce je vyhodnocení tradičních měření artikulační rychlosti a pravidelnosti provedených s využitím rychlého opakování kombinace slabik známé jako diadochokinetická (DDK) úloha, a dále prezentace nových měření prosodie provedených s využitím nestandardních vokalických úloh zahrnujících důraz, emoce a rytmus. Řečová data byla pořízena od 46 českých rodilých mluvčích, 23 z nich bylo diagnostikováno s výskytem Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN). Pro všechna zde prezentovaná měření byly navrženy automatické skripty v prostředí MATLAB. Hlas pacientů s výskytem PN ve srovnání se skupinou zdravých lidí ukázal statisticky významné rozdíly pro měření DDK rychlosti, variace základní hlasivkové frekvence a intenzity u důrazu, variace základní hlasivkové frekvence a druhého formantu u emocí, a rytmu.

Information system for management and analysis of medical data

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    This paper presents the current state of information system for management and analysis of medical data. The main aim of this project was to develop a web based system that could be used to store and easily manage large amount of data and that could provide access to this data for multiple users at the same time. The final system consists of ASP.NET application that forms the user interface and provides connection to SQL and file server. The system provides extensive user management and user access control, to suite variable needs of both small and large projects. It also contains a sophisticated search engine that makes management of large quantities of information easier. Finally, there is a basic analytical tool with potential for further improvement.

Kvantitativní akustické analýzy u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinsonova nemoc (PN) je chronické neurodegenerativní onemocnění charakterizováno progresivní ztrátou dopaminergních neuronů v substantia nigra. V důsledku řady motorických symptomů se u PN rozvíjí non-motorické deficity v řeči charakterizované jako hypokinetická dysartrie. Cílem práce jsou kvantitativní akustické analýzy specifických řečových subsystémů u pacientů s výskytem PN ve srovnání se zdravými účastníky kontrolní skupiny (KS).

Laboratory tasks from voice analysis in the study of biomedical engineering using matlab

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Students of Biomedical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague meet with the laboratory task "Voice Analysis" in the subject Biological Signals. They have the opportunity here to practically learn basics about fundamental glottal tone, formant frequencies, their parameters and detection, frequently used in voice pathology analysis.

Restoration of Guyton´s Diagram for Regulation of the Circulation as a Basis for Quantitative Physiological Model Development

  • Autoři: Kofránek, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Physiological Research. 2010, 59(6), 897-908. ISSN 0862-8408.
  • Rok: 2010
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    We present the current state of complex circulatory dynamics model development based on Guyton's famous diagram. The aim is to provide an open-source model that will allow the simulation of a number of pathological conditions on a virtual patient including cardiac, respiratory, and kidney failure. The model will also simulate the therapeutic influence of various drugs, infusions of electrolytes, blood transfusion, etc. As a current result of implementation, we describe a core model of human physiology targeting the systemic circulation, arterial pressure and body fluid regulation, including short- and long-term regulations. The model can be used for educational purposes and general reflection on physiological regulation in pathogenesis of various diseases.

Akauzální vzkříšení Guytonova diagramu

  • Autoři: Matejak, M., Kofránek, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Sborník příspěvků MEDSOFT 2009. Praha: Agentura Action M, 2009. pp. 105-120. ISBN 978-80-904326-0-4.
  • Rok: 2009
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    V minulém ročníku MEDSOFT jsme popsali implementaci klasického mnohokrát přetiskovaného Guytonova diagramu řízení krevního oběhu v prostředí Simulink, kde jsme (po opravě některých chyb v původním Guytonově schématu) zachovali stejný vzhled simulinkového modelu jako v původním grafickém obrázku - rozložení, rozmístění vodičů, názvy veličin i čísla bloků jsou stejné. Nyní jsme tento rozsáhlý model imple-implementovali akauzálním popisem v jazyce Modelica. Na tomto složitějším příkladě demonstrujeme výhody akauzálního popisu fyziologické reality. Struktura modelu pak více vystihuje reálné fyziologické vztahy, než postup výpočtu.

Analýza základní frekvence, amplitudového a frekvenčního kolísání hlasivek u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Frekvence hlasivek F0, amplitudová a frekvenční nestabilita jsou základními zkoumanými parametry nejen u Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN). Parametry byly zkoumány u 14 pacientů v rané fázi výskytu PN ve srovnání se 14 zdravými účastníky kontrolní skupiny (KS). Pro měření melodie F0 byly použity dva čtené texty o délce 80 a 136 slov a monolog o délce 90 sekund, pro měření rozsahu F0 byla požita věta o délce 28 slov a zpívaná stupnice. Rozdíly rozsahu F0 mezi oběma skupinami byly také měřeny u oznamovací, tázací a rozkazovací věty. Frekvenční a amplitudová nestabilita byla měřena u hlásky /i/ a nazálu /m/ vyslovované po minimální dobu pěti sekund.

Automatic Human Body Segmentation Using Mean-Shift Clustering As Assistance in The Hyperthermia Treatment Planning

  • Autoři: Vorlíček, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Technical Computing Prague 2009. Praha: Humusoft, 2009. pp. 113. ISBN 978-80-7080-733-0.
  • Rok: 2009
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The article deals the human body segmentation technique which supports hyperthermia oncology treatment planning. According to the inner structure of the tumor the applicator needs to be placed in the right direction. We used the automatical segmentation using mean-shift clustering algorithm in comparison with the segmented image data evaluated by the medical expert. The data was obtained with the commercial segmentation software 3D-DOCTOR. The quality of the segmentation can be essential for not only for treatment planning but can also provide the feedback in clinician decision making.

Formantová analýza a nové metody pro hodnocení míry artikulace u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Tato studie popisuje měření formantů F1 a F2, které jsou často užívanými parametry při akustických analýzách hlasu a dále popisuje nové metody pro hodnocení míry artikulace. První metoda je založena na změně spektrální vzdálenosti s využitím Baysessovského detektoru a druhá metoda měří periodicitu F2 při artikulaci. Všechny měření byly pořízeny u 16 mužských pacientů v ranném neléčeném stádiu Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN) v porovnání s 16 zdravými muži kontrolní skupiny (KS) ve srovnatelném věku...

Oslabení okluzí v promluvách pacientů s Parkinsonovou chorobou

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Článek se zabývá hodnocením oslabených okluzí u opakovaných promluv /pa-ta-ka/, které vznikají v důsledku nepřesné artikulace u pacientů s Parkinsonovou nemocí (PN) a porovnává je s projevy účastníků kontrolní skupiny (KS). Z akustického pohledu je během oslabené okluze přítomen šum, který lze pozorovat v histogramech signálů, v průběhu energie, v diferenci energie a v průměrovaných dlouhodobých periodogramech. Práce uvádí jednoduché robustní statistické parametry, které byly vybrány s ohledem na zvýrazění rozdílnosti promluv PN a KS a lze je získat bez labelování promluv. U všech jedenácti získaných parametrů byla statistická významnost p < 0,001. Studie tak doplňuje již dříve publikované akustické analýzy promluv pacientů s Parkinsonovou nemocí.

Rhythm evaluation in early untreated Parkinson's disease

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurological illness which impairs motor skills, speech, and other functions such as mood, behavior, thinking, and sensation. It causes vocal impairment for approximately 70-90% of the patients. The lower ability of rhythm perception may be one of the deficits in PD speech. Thus, we performed the vocal task of one rhythmically read text according performance of examinator for measuring of the ability to maintain appropriate rhythm. It is based on the modification of the dynamic time warping algorithm called derivative dynamic time warping. The automatical scripts for this measure were performed using Matlab environment. We collected speech data from 46 Czech native speakers, 23 with Parkinson's disease. As an algorithm validation, speech performance of the each participant was evaluated by speech therapist. The voice of PD group demonstrated significant differences in maintaining the appropriate rhythm.

Schola Ludus in Modern Garment: Use of Web Multimedia Simulation in Biomedical Teaching

  • Autoři: Kofránek, J., Privitzer, P., Matousek, S., Matejak, M., Vacek, O., Tribula, M., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Proceedings of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Modelling and Control in Biomedical Systems. Aalborg: IFAC, 2009. pp. 425-430. ISBN 978-3-902661-49-4.
  • Rok: 2009
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    The Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology designed as a multimedia-teaching tool, which helps to explain the function of individual physiological systems, causes and symptoms of their disorders in a visual way through the Internet is one of the projects in which we want to utilize new opportunities of multimedia and simulation models. Development of the Atlas requires cooperation of many Professional.

Useful Matlab tool for radio frequency designer

  • Autoři: Vorlíček, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Technical Computing Prague 2009. Praha: Humusoft, 2009. pp. 114. ISBN 978-80-7080-733-0.
  • Rok: 2009
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    This article deals with the design and construction of the microwave applicator with transversal electro-magnetic (TEM) wave, which is filled by distilled water. We have constructed an applicator that works on the frequency f = 434MHz with aperture size of 100mm x 75mm. The applicator is made of the copper. Design of dimensions of the applicator and simulation of the specific absorption rate (SAR) distribution were created in program SEMCAD X LIGHT 13. We have designed an image segmentation algorithm based on histogram fuzzification and k-means algorithms and a simple graphical user interface for computing of SAR distribution area, both in the MATLAB environment.

Využití, vývoj a automatizace nejen průmyslových nástrojů pro biomedicínské výukové simulátory

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Kofránek, J.
  • Publikace: Automatizace. 2009, 52(7-8), 443-446. ISSN 0005-125X.
  • Rok: 2009
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Cílem této práce je vývoj aplikací demonstrující složité chování fyziologických systémů, jejich dynamiku a regulaci. Dalším cílem této práce je pak začlenění využití počítačů do procesu výuky. Proces vývoje simulátoru se skládá z vytvoření modelu a následně vytvoření kvalitní animace, která může zobrazit simulační výsledky. V této studii je popsán přínos fyziologických simulátorů a technologie pro jejich vývoj. Pro vytvoření modelů bylo využito softwarových nástrojů Matlab/Simulink nebo Modelica, Control Web a Microsoft Visual Studio .NET pro vytváření uživatelského rozhraní a Adobe Flash nebo Expression Blend pro tvorbu animací. Simulační modely jsou využity pro výuku studentů biomedicínských oborů, stejně tak dobře jako teoretická báze pro studenty medicíny.

Akustická analýza intenzity a rychlosti řeči u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    K příznakům Parkinsonovy nemoci patří snížená intenzita fonace a změna tempa a plynulosti v řeči. Tato práce se zabývá analýzou výše uvedených jevů v řeči pacientů na počátku onemocnění a přináší použití nových původních charakteristik pro jejich hodnocení. Analýzy byly provedeny v programovém prostředí MATLAB na skupině 16 pacientů s Parkinsonovou nemocí (PN) a na kontrolní skupině 14 zdravých mluvčích podobného věkového složení (KS).

Akustická analýza základního hlasivkového tónu a rychlosti

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Snížená intenzita, změna v tempu řeči, změna v rozsahu frekvence kmitání hlasivek a amplitudová nestabilita náleží k příznakům Parkinsonovy nemoci. Tato práce se zabývá analýzou výše uvedených jevů v řeči pacientů na počátku onemocnění.

Analýza rychlosti řeči a intenzity u Parkinsonovy nemoci

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Artikulační rychlost, počet pauz a intenzita promluvy jsou klasickými zkoumanými parametry u Parkinsonovy nemoci (PN). Parametry byly zkoumány u 14 pacientů s výskytem PN ve srovnání se 14 zdravými účastníky kontrolní skupiny (KS).

Poruchy řeči u Parkinsonovy nemoci - analýza výskytu a charakteru příznaků

  • Autoři: Růžičková, H., prof. Ing. Roman Čmejla, CSc., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Klempíř, J., Majerová, V., Roth, J., Růžička, E.
  • Publikace: Česká a slovenská neurologie a neurochirurgie, 22. český a slovenský neurologický sjezd, sborník abstrakt. Praha: Česká lékařská společnost J. E. Purkyně, 2008, pp. 36. ISSN 1210-7859.
  • Rok: 2008
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Cílem práce bylo zjistit výskyt a analyzovat charakter příznaků Parkinsonovy nemoci - poruchy komunikace a to jak ve složce nonverbální (hypomimie, snížená gestikulace), tak ve složce verbální (setřelá artikulace, změny tempa a plynulosti řeči, monotónní projev, snížení intenzity a zhoršení kvality fonace).

Speech fundamental frequency and velocity analysis in Parkinsons disease

  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Lower intensity, tempo changes, speech disfluences, changes in both frequency range and amplitude stability belong to early stage of Parkinson's disease (PD) symptoms. This paper deals with the analysis of these PD features in the beginning of their disease. The analyses were performed with the MATLAB computing software in 14 healthy participants (Healthy Control HC) and 16 patient volunteers (Parkinson's Disease PD).

Tools development for physiological educational simulators

  • Autoři: doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Kofránek, J.
  • Publikace: Digital Technologies 2008. Žilina: Žilinská universita, Elektrotechnická fakulta, 2008. ISBN 978-80-8070-953-2.
  • Rok: 2008
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    One of our main goals is to incorporate the usage of computers into the process of education. The aim of the work lies in the development of applications that would demonstrate non-trivial physiological systems behavior, their dynamics and regulation.

Vzkříšení Guytonova diagramu - od obrázku k simulačnímu modelu

  • Autoři: Kofránek, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Matoušek, S.
  • Publikace: MEDSOFT 2008. Praha: Agentura Action M, 2008. pp. 57-62. ISBN 978-80-86742-22-9.
  • Rok: 2008
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Autoři popisují implementaci klasického mnohokrát přetiskovaného Guytonova diagramu řízení krevního oběhu v prostředí Simulink. Upozorňují, že v obrázkovém diagramu jsou chyby, které bylo nutné při implementaci opravit.

Guytons Diagram Brought to Life - from Graphic Chart to Simulation Model for Teaching Physiology

  • Autoři: Kofránek, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D., Matoušek, S.
  • Publikace: Technical Computing Prague 2007. Praha: Humusoft, 2007. p. 1-14. ISBN 978-80-7080-658-6.
  • Rok: 2007
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Thirty five years ago, A.C. Guyton et al. published a description of a large model of physiological regulation in a form of a graphic schematic diagram. Authors brought this old large-scale diagram to life using Matlab/Simulink.

Od obrázkových schémat k modelům pro výuku

  • Autoři: Kofránek, J., doc. Ing. Jan Rusz, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Československá fyziologie. 2007, 2007(2), 69-78. ISSN 1210-6313.
  • Rok: 2007
  • Pracoviště: Katedra teorie obvodů
  • Anotace:
    Před pětatřiceti lety uveřejnil A.C. Guyton et al. popis rozsáhlého modelu fyziologických vztahů ve formě grafického schématu. Autoři toto rozsáhlé grafické schéma oživili s využitím moderního vývojového nástroje určeného pro vývoj simulačních modelů. Rozložení jednotlivých prvků, jejich propojení a popis byl zachován. Na rozdíl od starého schématu je nové schéma funkčním simulačním modelem, umožňující ve vývojovém prostředí Matlab/Simulink model spouštět a studovat chování všech proměnných. Autoři dále popisují technologii vývoje multimediálních výukových simulátorů.

Za stránku zodpovídá: Ing. Mgr. Radovan Suk