Does Cervical Muscular Contraction Affect the Measurement for Electroglottographic Perturbation Parameters?

Area of Science:

• Voice production and acoustics
• Biomedical signal processing
• Speech pathology

Background:

• Electroglottography (EGG) is crucial for voice analysis.
• Cervical muscle activity can artifact EGG signals.
• Understanding these artifacts is key for accurate voice assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if cervical muscular contraction during phonation affects EGG period perturbation quotient (PPQ) and amplitude perturbation quotient (APQ).
• To investigate if high-pass filtering can mitigate these effects.

Main Methods:

• Prospective study involving 19 non-dysphonic speakers and 21 patients with muscle tension dysphonia.
• Participants performed natural phonation (NP) and muscular contracted phonation (MCP) tasks.
• EGG signals were recorded and analyzed for PPQ and APQ after high-pass filtering at various cutoff frequencies.

Main Results:

• Muscular contracted phonation (MCP) increased cervical EMG activity and introduced low-frequency noise (<50 Hz) into EGG signals.
• MCP tasks significantly increased EGG-APQ values, but not EGG-PPQ.
• High-pass filtering above 50 Hz reduced EGG-APQ values during MCP tasks.

Conclusions:

• Cervical muscular contraction significantly impacts EGG-APQ, independent of EMG.
• High-pass filtering at cutoff frequencies over 50 Hz effectively attenuates these artifacts.
• This finding is vital for accurate voice disorder diagnosis and research.