A Novel Acoustic Evaluation Method for the Diagnosis of Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

Adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) is characterized by involuntary laryngeal muscle spasms. Due to the lack of a quantitative evaluation method, most measurements have demonstrated difficulty in validity and reliability for diagnosing ADSD. This study aimed to establish a novel indicator for ADSD and determine its diagnostic effects.

We investigated 98 voice samples from 49 patients with ADSD and 49 healthy participants. A sustained vowel was recorded by a high-definition audio recorder. Voice samples underwent regular acoustic evaluation and a novel global dimension (GD) method. GD, Jitter, Shimmer, HNR, Frequency shift, and CPPS were measured for both groups.

Statistical analysis revealed that the GD method effectively differentiated ADSD patients from healthy participants (p < 0.001, D'>0.8). Subsequent multiclass receiver operating characteristic analysis demonstrated that GD possessed the most significant classification accuracy (area under the curve = 0.988) compared with other acoustic parameters.

GD was an effective metric for objective differentiation between ADSD patients and healthy participants. This metric could assist clinicians in the diagnosis of ADSD patients.