An anchored dynamic time-warping for alignment and comparison of swallowing acoustic signals

Properties of signals captured by contact accelerometers assist the evaluation of human organs involved in the swallowing process. Here we present a novel method to account the alignment between two different swallowing signals based on two steps: first, a scaled cross-correlation determines an anchor point of maximum similarity between the signals, dividing both signals in two parts; next, dynamic time warping aligns the left and right parts of both signals. Additional filtering procedures are used smooth the swallowing signals due to their low SNR. The results show that this technique can be used to assess similarities between liquid and solid boluses of a subject.