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A pneumatic Bionic Voice prosthesis-Pre-clinical trials of controlling the voice onset and offset.

ABSTRACT: Despite emergent progress in many fields of bionics, a functional Bionic Voice prosthesis for laryngectomy patients (larynx amputees) has not yet been achieved, leading to a lifetime of vocal disability for these patients. This study introduces a novel framework of Pneumatic Bionic Voice Prostheses as an electronic adaptation of the Pneumatic Artificial Larynx (PAL) device. The PAL is a non-invasive mechanical voice source, driven exclusively by respiration with an exceptionally high voice quality, comparable to the existing gold standard of Tracheoesophageal (TE) voice prosthesis. Following PAL design closely as the reference, Pneumatic Bionic Voice Prostheses seem to have a strong potential to substitute the existing gold standard by generating a similar voice quality while remaining non-invasive and non-surgical. This paper designs the first Pneumatic Bionic Voice prosthesis and evaluates its onset and offset control against the PAL device through pre-clinical trials on one laryngectomy patient. The evaluation on a database of more than five hours of continuous/isolated speech recordings shows a close match between the onset/offset control of the Pneumatic Bionic Voice and the PAL with an accuracy of 98.45 ±0.54%. When implemented in real-time, the Pneumatic Bionic Voice prosthesis controller has an average onset/offset delay of 10 milliseconds compared to the PAL. Hence it addresses a major disadvantage of previous electronic voice prostheses, including myoelectric Bionic Voice, in meeting the short time-frames of controlling the onset/offset of the voice in continuous speech.

SUBMITTER: Ahmadi F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5821320 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A pneumatic Bionic Voice prosthesis-Pre-clinical trials of controlling the voice onset and offset.

Ahmadi Farzaneh F Noorian Farzad F Novakovic Daniel D van Schaik André A

PloS one 20180221 2

Despite emergent progress in many fields of bionics, a functional Bionic Voice prosthesis for laryngectomy patients (larynx amputees) has not yet been achieved, leading to a lifetime of vocal disability for these patients. This study introduces a novel framework of Pneumatic Bionic Voice Prostheses as an electronic adaptation of the Pneumatic Artificial Larynx (PAL) device. The PAL is a non-invasive mechanical voice source, driven exclusively by respiration with an exceptionally high voice quali ...[more]

PMID: 29466455

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Project description:Importance:Voice prosthesis (VP) device life is a limiting factor of tracheoesophageal (TE) voice restoration that drives patient satisfaction, health care costs, and overall burden. Historic data suggest that TE VPs have an average device life of generally 3 to 6 months, but these data are typically derived from small samples using only 1 or 2 devices. Objective:To reexamine current device life in a large, contemporary cancer hospital in the United States that uses a wide assortment of VPs. Design, Setting, and Participants:This retrospective observational study included 390 laryngectomized patients with a tracheoesophageal puncture (TEP) who had VP management at MD Anderson Cancer Center between July 1, 2003, and December 31, 2013. Main Outcomes and Measures:Tracheoesophageal voice-related outcomes were: (1) device life duration to VP removal, and (2) treatment-related and prosthetic-related factors influencing device failure. Primary independent variables included treatment history (extent of surgery and radiation history), VP type (indwelling vs nonindwelling, size, specialty features), and reason for removal (leakage, complication, other). Duration was examined using Kaplan-Meier analysis. Disease, treatment, and patient-specific factors were analyzed as predictors of duration. Results:Overall, 3648 VPs were placed in the 390 patients (median [range] age, 62 [34-92] years). Indwelling prostheses accounted for more than half (56%) of the devices placed (55%, 20-Fr diameter; 33%, 8-mm length). More than two-thirds (69%) of prostheses were removed because of leakage, while the rest were removed for other reasons. Median device life was 61 days for all prostheses. Indwelling and nonindwelling VPs had median device lives of 70 and 38 days, respectively. There was no significant difference between specialty prostheses compared with standard devices (median duration, 61 vs 70 days, respectively). The Provox ActiValve (Atos Medical) had the longest life. Neither radiation therapy nor extent of surgery had a meaningful impact on device life. Conclusions and Relevance:Our data suggest that VP duration demonstrates a lower durability than historically reported. This may reflect the intensification of treatment regimens that complicate TEP management in an era of organ preservation; however, further investigation is needed.

Project description:BackgroundAdvanced prostheses can restore function and improve quality of life for individuals with amputations. Unfortunately, most commercial control strategies do not fully utilize the rich control information from residual nerves and musculature. Continuous decoders can provide more intuitive prosthesis control using multi-channel neural or electromyographic recordings. Three components influence continuous decoder performance: the data used to train the algorithm, the algorithm, and smoothing filters on the algorithm's output. Individual groups often focus on a single decoder, so very few studies compare different decoders using otherwise similar experimental conditions.MethodsWe completed a two-phase, head-to-head comparison of 12 continuous decoders using activities of daily living. In phase one, we compared two training types and a smoothing filter with three algorithms (modified Kalman filter, multi-layer perceptron, and convolutional neural network) in a clothespin relocation task. We compared training types that included only individual digit and wrist movements vs. combination movements (e.g., simultaneous grasp and wrist flexion). We also compared raw vs. nonlinearly smoothed algorithm outputs. In phase two, we compared the three algorithms in fragile egg, zipping, pouring, and folding tasks using the combination training and smoothing found beneficial in phase one. In both phases, we collected objective, performance-based (e.g., success rate), and subjective, user-focused (e.g., preference) measures.ResultsPhase one showed that combination training improved prosthesis control accuracy and speed, and that the nonlinear smoothing improved accuracy but generally reduced speed. Phase one importantly showed simultaneous movements were used in the task, and that the modified Kalman filter and multi-layer perceptron predicted more simultaneous movements than the convolutional neural network. In phase two, user-focused metrics favored the convolutional neural network and modified Kalman filter, whereas performance-based metrics were generally similar among all algorithms.ConclusionsThese results confirm that state-of-the-art algorithms, whether linear or nonlinear in nature, functionally benefit from training on more complex data and from output smoothing. These studies will be used to select a decoder for a long-term take-home trial with implanted neuromyoelectric devices. Overall, clinical considerations may favor the mKF as it is similar in performance, faster to train, and computationally less expensive than neural networks.

Project description:The sound source of a voice is produced by the self-excited oscillation of the vocal folds. In modal voice production, a drastic increase in transglottal pressure after vocal fold closure works as a driving force that develops self-excitation. Another type of vocal fold oscillation with less pronounced glottal closure observed in falsetto voice production has been accounted for by the mucosal wave theory. The classical theory assumes a quasi-steady flow, and the expected driving force onto the vocal folds under wavelike motion is derived from the Bernoulli effect. However, wavelike motion is not always observed during falsetto voice production. More importantly, the application of the quasi-steady assumption to a falsetto voice with a fundamental frequency of several hundred hertz is unsupported by experiments. These considerations suggested that the mechanism of falsetto voice onset may be essentially different from that explained by the mucosal wave theory. In this paper, an alternative mechanism is submitted that explains how self-excitation reminiscent of the falsetto voice could be produced independent of the glottal closure and wavelike motion. This new explanation is derived through analytical procedures by employing only general unsteady equations of motion for flow and solids. The analysis demonstrated that a convective acceleration of a flow induced by rapid wall movement functions as a negative damping force, leading to the self-excitation of the vocal folds. The critical subglottal pressure and volume flow are expressed as functions of vocal fold biomechanical properties, geometry, and voice fundamental frequency. The analytically derived conditions are qualitatively and quantitatively reasonable in view of reported measurement data of the thresholds required for falsetto voice onset. Understanding of the voice onset mechanism and the explicit mathematical descriptions of thresholds would be beneficial for the diagnosis and treatment of voice diseases and the development of artificial vocal folds.

Project description:In the primate visual cortex, both the magnitude of the neuronal response and its timing can carry important information about the visual world, but studies typically focus only on response magnitude. Here, we examine the onset and offset latency of the responses of neurons in area V4 of awake, behaving macaques across several experiments in the context of a variety of stimuli and task paradigms. Our results highlight distinct contributions of stimuli and tasks to V4 response latency. We found that response onset latencies are shorter than typically cited (median = 75.5 ms), supporting a role for V4 neurons in rapid object and scene recognition functions. Moreover, onset latencies are longer for smaller stimuli and stimulus outlines, consistent with the hypothesis that longer latencies are associated with higher spatial frequency content. Strikingly, we found that onset latencies showed no significant dependence on stimulus occlusion, unlike in inferotemporal cortex, nor on task demands. Across the V4 population, onset latencies had a broad distribution, reflecting the diversity of feedforward, recurrent, and feedback connections that inform the responses of individual neurons. Response offset latencies, on the other hand, displayed the opposite tendency in their relationship to stimulus and task attributes: they are less influenced by stimulus appearance but are shorter in guided saccade tasks compared with fixation tasks. The observation that response latency is influenced by stimulus- and task-associated factors emphasizes a need to examine response timing alongside firing rate in determining the functional role of area V4.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Onset and offset timing of neuronal responses can provide information about visual environment and neuron's role in visual processing and its anatomical connectivity. In the first comprehensive examination of onset and offset latencies in the intermediate visual cortical area V4, we find neurons respond faster than previously reported, making them ideally suited to contribute to rapid object and scene recognition. While response onset reflects stimulus characteristics, timing of response offset is influenced more by behavioral task.

Dataset Information

A pneumatic Bionic Voice prosthesis-Pre-clinical trials of controlling the voice onset and offset.

Publications

A pneumatic Bionic Voice prosthesis-Pre-clinical trials of controlling the voice onset and offset.

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