SpeechCura: A Novel Speech Augmentation Framework to Tackle Data Scarcity in Healthcare

Speech biomarkers are critical for diagnosing conditions like Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), but data scarcity hinders progress. We present SpeechCura, an open-source framework for speech data augmentation using non-generative methods (e.g., frequency masking, time masking) and generative methods (e.g., Text-to-Speech, voice conversion). Evaluated on the DementiaBank dataset, SpeechCura improved the performance of ADRD detection pipeline, TransformerCARE, by 7.4% in F1-score and 3.8% in AUC-ROC with voice conversion methods. These results highlight the potential of SpeechCura in addressing data scarcity challenges and its adaptability for other healthcare applications, ultimately enhancing diagnostic performance and patient outcomes.