Application of Glottal Disturbogram as a novel tool for the description of vocal disturbances

The paper introduces "Glottal Disturbogram" as a new tool for the discrimination, evaluation and representation of glottal disturbances which may be met in pathological voicing or singing. The "Glottal Disturbogram's" principles and related features also suit similar applications such as the acoustics of some families of musical instruments. Disturbogram's computational and display characteristics are presented with the use of both synthetic glottal patterns and real signals obtained from subjects with voice disorders. Results show that Disturbogram may efficiently discriminate and quantify perturbation types, offering a valuable tool in clinical or laboratory investigation of both voice disorders and normal voicing types.