Khalid Malki - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Khalid Malki

2011 IEEE Symposium on Computers & Informatics, 2011

In this paper, analysis of speech from voice disordered people is performed from automatic speech... more In this paper, analysis of speech from voice disordered people is performed from automatic speech recognition (ASR) point of view. Six different types of voicing disorder (pathological voice) are analyzed to show the difficulty of automatically recognizing their corresponding speech. As a case study, Arabic spoken digits are taken as input. The distribution of first four formants of vowel /a/ is extracted to show a significant deviation of formants from the normal speech to disordered speech. Experiment result reveals that current ASR technique is far from reliable performance in case of pathological speech, and thereby we need attention to this.

Dysphagia, 2014

The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is a 25-item self-administered questionnaire. It is a noninvas... more The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is a 25-item self-administered questionnaire. It is a noninvasive tool for measuring the handicapping effect of dysphagia on the physical, functional, and emotional aspects of people's lives. The purposes of the present study were to develop an Arabic version of the DHI and to evaluate its validity, consistency, and reliability in the normal Arabic population with oropharyngeal dysphagia. This was a prospective study that was carried out at the Communication and Swallowing Disorders Unit, King Saud University. The generated Arabic DHI was administered to 94 patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia and 98 control subjects. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were evaluated. The results of the patients and the control group were compared. The Arabic DHI showed excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.95). Also, good test-retest reliability was found for the total scores of the Arabic DHI (r = 0.9, p = 0.001). There was a significant difference between the DHI scores of the control group and those of the oropharyngeal dysphagia group (p < 0.001). This study demonstrated that the Arabic DHI is a valid tool for self-assessment of the handicapping effect of dysphagia on the physical, functional, and emotional aspects of patients and can be used by Arabic language speakers.

Clinical and Experimental Otorhinolaryngology, 2011

A persistent insufficiency of glottal closure is mostly a consequence of impaired unilateral voca... more A persistent insufficiency of glottal closure is mostly a consequence of impaired unilateral vocal fold movement. Functional surgical treatment is required because of the consequential voice, breathing and swallowing impairments. The goal of the study was to determine the functional voice outcomes after medialization thyroplasty with using autologous septal cartilage from the nose. External vocal fold medialization using autologous nasal septal cartilage was performed on 15 patients (6 females and 9 males; age range, 30 to 57 years). Detailed functional examinations were performed for all the patients before and after the surgery and this included perceptual voice assessment, laryngostroboscopic examination and acoustic voice analysis. All the patients reported improvement of voice quality post-operatively. Laryngostroboscopy revealed almost complete glottal closure after surgery in the majority of patients. Acoustic and perceptual voice assessment showed significant improvement post-operatively. Medialization thyroplasty using an autologous nasal septal cartilage implant offers good tissue tolerability and significant improvement of the subjective and objective functional voice outcomes.

Folia phoniatrica et logopaedica : official organ of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP), Jan 9, 2015

Psychological factors have been claimed to play a role in the predisposition for laryngopharyngea... more Psychological factors have been claimed to play a role in the predisposition for laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) symptoms. The aims of this work were to study the relationship between psychological disorders and LPR and to investigate the effect of potential psychological disorders on patients' self-perception of reflux-related problems. Forty-two patients with symptoms suggestive of LPR were psychologically evaluated using the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, the Symptom Checklist-90 Revised, the Manifest Anxiety Scale of Taylor, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale. Oropharyngeal 24-hour pH monitoring was used to diagnose LPR. LPR-related symptoms were assessed using the reflux symptom index (RSI) and the voice handicap index-10 (VHI-10). Patients were divided into groups based on psychiatric evaluation and pH results. Correlations between psychological profile characteristics and LPR-related parameters were also investigat...

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 2012

Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Al... more Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Although voice disorders are common in the pediatric population, there is still a lack of information available to clinicians regarding evaluation and treatment of pediatric voice disorders. The purpose of the present study was to develop an Arabic version of pediatric VHI and to test its validity and reliability. Fifty children with voice disorders were included in the study. The Arabic version of PVHI was derived in the standard way for test translation. The translated version was then administrated to the parents or caregiver of children with voice disorders and parents of 75 children with no history or symptoms of voice problems. Participants' responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity, and to compare the pathological group with the control group. The results showed high internal consistency and reliability of the Arabic version of PVHI (Cronbach's α=0.93 and r=0.95, respectively), and high item-domain and domain-total correlation (r=0.86-0.97). There was a statistically significant difference between the control and the voice disordered groups (P<0.001). The Arabic version of PVHI is considered to be a valid and reliable assessment tool used by the parents and caregivers of children with voice disorders to assess the severity of voice disorders in Arabic language speaking children.

BioMedical Engineering OnLine, 2011

Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in ... more Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in dysphonic patients for the classification of the type and severity of voice pathologies using automatic speech recognition (ASR). The aim of this work was to study the accuracy of the conventional ASR system (with Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) based front end and hidden Markov model (HMM) based back end) in recognizing the speech characteristics of people with pathological voice. Materials and methods: The speech samples of 62 dysphonic patients with six different types of voice disorders and 50 normal subjects were analyzed. The Arabic spoken digits were taken as an input. The distribution of the first four formants of the vowel /a/ was extracted to examine deviation of the formants from normal. Results: There was 100% recognition accuracy obtained for Arabic digits spoken by normal speakers. However, there was a significant loss of accuracy in the classifications while spoken by voice disordered subjects. Moreover, no significant improvement in ASR performance was achieved after assessing a subset of the individuals with disordered voices who underwent treatment.

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 2013

There is a lack of consensus regarding the clinical presentation and diagnosis of laryngopharynge... more There is a lack of consensus regarding the clinical presentation and diagnosis of laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR). The aim of this study was to explore voice-related abnormalities in a group of LPR patients, diagnosed with a 24-hour oropharyngeal pH monitoring. Eighty-two patients with voice-related problems participated in the study. Diagnosis of LPR was made using a 24-hour oropharyngeal pH monitoring. Patients were divided accordingly into positive and negative pH groups. Comparisons between the two groups were done, including results of clinical presentation, Voice Handicap Index-10 (VHI-10), reflux symptom index (RSI), reflux finding score (RFS), and acoustic measurements. The correlation was conducted between Ryan scores and other variables including VHI-10, RSI, and RFS. Significant differences were found between the two groups for RSI and VHI-10. No significant differences were found between the two groups regarding clinical presentation, RFS or acoustic measures. Significant positive correlations were found between the Ryan composite measurements and both severity ratings (VHI-10, RSI). LPR clinical presentation appears to be non-specific in terms of symptoms and laryngeal findings. LPR appears to have an effect on the patients' self-perception of voice problems. Further studies are needed to clarify the effect of LPR on acoustic measurements.

European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, 2011

Post-lingual deaf adults can develop some vocal abnormalities similar to those developed in preli... more Post-lingual deaf adults can develop some vocal abnormalities similar to those developed in prelingual deaf individuals. The aim of this work was to study the eVect of cochlear implantation followed by postoperative rehabilitation on voice acoustics in post-lingual hearing impaired adults with diVerent durations of hearing loss. The study included 35 post-lingual hearing impaired adults who underwent cochlear implantation. Patients were divided into two groups according to the duration of their hearing loss. Each group was further divided into two subgroups according to whether they received auditory rehabilitation or not. Using the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) parameters, comparisons were made between each subgroup of patients and the normal MDVP Saudi database, and between subgroups of patients. Most of the patients in the two groups reported signiWcant improvement in their MDVP results postimplantation. Further, signiWcantly deviant MDVP parameters were reported in the group of patients with longer duration of hearing loss. Patients who received rehabilitation signiWcantly improved more than those who did not. In conclusion, it appears that cochlear implantation improves the auditory control of voice production in post-lingual deaf adults. Also, it is obvious that cochlear implantation at an early stage of hearing loss gives better results on voice control, especially if augmented with auditory rehabilitation.

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 2012

Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Al... more Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Although voice disorders are common in the pediatric population, there is still a lack of information available to clinicians regarding evaluation and treatment of pediatric voice disorders. The purpose of the present study was to develop an Arabic version of pediatric VHI and to test its validity and reliability. Fifty children with voice disorders were included in the study. The Arabic version of PVHI was derived in the standard way for test translation. The translated version was then administrated to the parents or caregiver of children with voice disorders and parents of 75 children with no history or symptoms of voice problems. Participants' responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity, and to compare the pathological group with the control group. The results showed high internal consistency and reliability of the Arabic version of PVHI (Cronbach's α=0.93 and r=0.95, respectively), and high item-domain and domain-total correlation (r=0.86-0.97). There was a statistically significant difference between the control and the voice disordered groups (P<0.001). The Arabic version of PVHI is considered to be a valid and reliable assessment tool used by the parents and caregivers of children with voice disorders to assess the severity of voice disorders in Arabic language speaking children.

The purpose of this research was to assess the usability of an Arabic version of TOPL-2 in identi... more The purpose of this research was to assess the usability of an Arabic version of TOPL-2 in identifying individuals with PLIs and distinguishing them from those without PLIs.

Journal of Voice, 2012

Background and Objective. Objective assessment of voice pathology has a growing interest nowadays... more Background and Objective. Objective assessment of voice pathology has a growing interest nowadays. Automatic speech/speaker recognition (ASR) systems are commonly deployed in voice pathology detection. The aim of this work was to develop a novel feature extraction method for ASR that incorporates distributions of voiced and unvoiced parts, and voice onset and offset characteristics in a time-frequency domain to detect voice pathology. Materials and Methods. The speech samples of 70 dysphonic patients with six different types of voice disorders and 50 normal subjects were analyzed. The Arabic spoken digits (1-10) were taken as an input. The proposed feature extraction method was embedded into the ASR system with Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifier to detect voice disorder.

European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, 2010

The voice handicap index (VHI) is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring a patient... more The voice handicap index (VHI) is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring a patient's self-assessment of voice severity. In some ways, it reflects the patient's quality of life. Although it has been recognized and widely applied to populations in European countries and to English speaking populations, it has not been used in its present forms in the Arabic speaking countries due to the specific language constraints of Euro-American terminology. The purposes of this study were to generate an Arabic version of VHI, to assess its reliability, and to apply it to a wide variety of normal and dysphonic individuals of Arabic descent. The Arabic version of VHI was derived in the standard way for test translation. The translated version was then administered to 65 patients with voice disorders and 65 control subjects. Participants' responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity, and to compare the pathological group with the control group. The Arabic VHI showed a significant high internal consistency and reliability (Cronbach's a = 0.97 and r = 0.89, respectively), high item-domain and domaintotal correlation (r = 0.73-0.94). There was a statistically significant difference between the control and the voicedisordered groups (P \ 0.001). The results of this study demonstrated strong internal consistency of the Arabic VHI. Thus, the Arabic version of VHI is considered to be a valid and reliable self-assessment tool for the severity of voice disorders in Arabic language speaking patients.

BioMedical Engineering OnLine, 2011

Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in ... more Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in dysphonic patients for the classification of the type and severity of voice pathologies using automatic speech recognition (ASR). The aim of this work was to study the accuracy of the conventional ASR system (with Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) based front end and hidden Markov model (HMM) based back end) in recognizing the speech characteristics of people with pathological voice. Materials and methods: The speech samples of 62 dysphonic patients with six different types of voice disorders and 50 normal subjects were analyzed. The Arabic spoken digits were taken as an input. The distribution of the first four formants of the vowel /a/ was extracted to examine deviation of the formants from normal. Results: There was 100% recognition accuracy obtained for Arabic digits spoken by normal speakers. However, there was a significant loss of accuracy in the classifications while spoken by voice disordered subjects. Moreover, no significant improvement in ASR performance was achieved after assessing a subset of the individuals with disordered voices who underwent treatment.

The purpose of this research was to compare the results of the Arabic TOPL-2 as a psycholinguisti... more The purpose of this research was to compare the results of the Arabic TOPL-2 as a psycholinguistic-marker that measures the ability of individuals with developmental dysphasia DD and the results of both the Pragmatics Profile PP and Observational Rating Scale ORS subtests from CELF-4.

2011 IEEE Symposium on Computers & Informatics, 2011

In this paper, analysis of speech from voice disordered people is performed from automatic speech... more In this paper, analysis of speech from voice disordered people is performed from automatic speech recognition (ASR) point of view. Six different types of voicing disorder (pathological voice) are analyzed to show the difficulty of automatically recognizing their corresponding speech. As a case study, Arabic spoken digits are taken as input. The distribution of first four formants of vowel /a/ is extracted to show a significant deviation of formants from the normal speech to disordered speech. Experiment result reveals that current ASR technique is far from reliable performance in case of pathological speech, and thereby we need attention to this.

Dysphagia, 2014

The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is a 25-item self-administered questionnaire. It is a noninvas... more The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is a 25-item self-administered questionnaire. It is a noninvasive tool for measuring the handicapping effect of dysphagia on the physical, functional, and emotional aspects of people's lives. The purposes of the present study were to develop an Arabic version of the DHI and to evaluate its validity, consistency, and reliability in the normal Arabic population with oropharyngeal dysphagia. This was a prospective study that was carried out at the Communication and Swallowing Disorders Unit, King Saud University. The generated Arabic DHI was administered to 94 patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia and 98 control subjects. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were evaluated. The results of the patients and the control group were compared. The Arabic DHI showed excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.95). Also, good test-retest reliability was found for the total scores of the Arabic DHI (r = 0.9, p = 0.001). There was a significant difference between the DHI scores of the control group and those of the oropharyngeal dysphagia group (p < 0.001). This study demonstrated that the Arabic DHI is a valid tool for self-assessment of the handicapping effect of dysphagia on the physical, functional, and emotional aspects of patients and can be used by Arabic language speakers.

Clinical and Experimental Otorhinolaryngology, 2011

A persistent insufficiency of glottal closure is mostly a consequence of impaired unilateral voca... more A persistent insufficiency of glottal closure is mostly a consequence of impaired unilateral vocal fold movement. Functional surgical treatment is required because of the consequential voice, breathing and swallowing impairments. The goal of the study was to determine the functional voice outcomes after medialization thyroplasty with using autologous septal cartilage from the nose. External vocal fold medialization using autologous nasal septal cartilage was performed on 15 patients (6 females and 9 males; age range, 30 to 57 years). Detailed functional examinations were performed for all the patients before and after the surgery and this included perceptual voice assessment, laryngostroboscopic examination and acoustic voice analysis. All the patients reported improvement of voice quality post-operatively. Laryngostroboscopy revealed almost complete glottal closure after surgery in the majority of patients. Acoustic and perceptual voice assessment showed significant improvement post-operatively. Medialization thyroplasty using an autologous nasal septal cartilage implant offers good tissue tolerability and significant improvement of the subjective and objective functional voice outcomes.

Folia phoniatrica et logopaedica : official organ of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP), Jan 9, 2015

Psychological factors have been claimed to play a role in the predisposition for laryngopharyngea... more Psychological factors have been claimed to play a role in the predisposition for laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) symptoms. The aims of this work were to study the relationship between psychological disorders and LPR and to investigate the effect of potential psychological disorders on patients' self-perception of reflux-related problems. Forty-two patients with symptoms suggestive of LPR were psychologically evaluated using the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, the Symptom Checklist-90 Revised, the Manifest Anxiety Scale of Taylor, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale. Oropharyngeal 24-hour pH monitoring was used to diagnose LPR. LPR-related symptoms were assessed using the reflux symptom index (RSI) and the voice handicap index-10 (VHI-10). Patients were divided into groups based on psychiatric evaluation and pH results. Correlations between psychological profile characteristics and LPR-related parameters were also investigat...

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 2012

Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Al... more Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Although voice disorders are common in the pediatric population, there is still a lack of information available to clinicians regarding evaluation and treatment of pediatric voice disorders. The purpose of the present study was to develop an Arabic version of pediatric VHI and to test its validity and reliability. Fifty children with voice disorders were included in the study. The Arabic version of PVHI was derived in the standard way for test translation. The translated version was then administrated to the parents or caregiver of children with voice disorders and parents of 75 children with no history or symptoms of voice problems. Participants' responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity, and to compare the pathological group with the control group. The results showed high internal consistency and reliability of the Arabic version of PVHI (Cronbach's α=0.93 and r=0.95, respectively), and high item-domain and domain-total correlation (r=0.86-0.97). There was a statistically significant difference between the control and the voice disordered groups (P<0.001). The Arabic version of PVHI is considered to be a valid and reliable assessment tool used by the parents and caregivers of children with voice disorders to assess the severity of voice disorders in Arabic language speaking children.

BioMedical Engineering OnLine, 2011

Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in ... more Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in dysphonic patients for the classification of the type and severity of voice pathologies using automatic speech recognition (ASR). The aim of this work was to study the accuracy of the conventional ASR system (with Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) based front end and hidden Markov model (HMM) based back end) in recognizing the speech characteristics of people with pathological voice. Materials and methods: The speech samples of 62 dysphonic patients with six different types of voice disorders and 50 normal subjects were analyzed. The Arabic spoken digits were taken as an input. The distribution of the first four formants of the vowel /a/ was extracted to examine deviation of the formants from normal. Results: There was 100% recognition accuracy obtained for Arabic digits spoken by normal speakers. However, there was a significant loss of accuracy in the classifications while spoken by voice disordered subjects. Moreover, no significant improvement in ASR performance was achieved after assessing a subset of the individuals with disordered voices who underwent treatment.

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 2013

There is a lack of consensus regarding the clinical presentation and diagnosis of laryngopharynge... more There is a lack of consensus regarding the clinical presentation and diagnosis of laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR). The aim of this study was to explore voice-related abnormalities in a group of LPR patients, diagnosed with a 24-hour oropharyngeal pH monitoring. Eighty-two patients with voice-related problems participated in the study. Diagnosis of LPR was made using a 24-hour oropharyngeal pH monitoring. Patients were divided accordingly into positive and negative pH groups. Comparisons between the two groups were done, including results of clinical presentation, Voice Handicap Index-10 (VHI-10), reflux symptom index (RSI), reflux finding score (RFS), and acoustic measurements. The correlation was conducted between Ryan scores and other variables including VHI-10, RSI, and RFS. Significant differences were found between the two groups for RSI and VHI-10. No significant differences were found between the two groups regarding clinical presentation, RFS or acoustic measures. Significant positive correlations were found between the Ryan composite measurements and both severity ratings (VHI-10, RSI). LPR clinical presentation appears to be non-specific in terms of symptoms and laryngeal findings. LPR appears to have an effect on the patients' self-perception of voice problems. Further studies are needed to clarify the effect of LPR on acoustic measurements.

European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, 2011

Post-lingual deaf adults can develop some vocal abnormalities similar to those developed in preli... more Post-lingual deaf adults can develop some vocal abnormalities similar to those developed in prelingual deaf individuals. The aim of this work was to study the eVect of cochlear implantation followed by postoperative rehabilitation on voice acoustics in post-lingual hearing impaired adults with diVerent durations of hearing loss. The study included 35 post-lingual hearing impaired adults who underwent cochlear implantation. Patients were divided into two groups according to the duration of their hearing loss. Each group was further divided into two subgroups according to whether they received auditory rehabilitation or not. Using the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) parameters, comparisons were made between each subgroup of patients and the normal MDVP Saudi database, and between subgroups of patients. Most of the patients in the two groups reported signiWcant improvement in their MDVP results postimplantation. Further, signiWcantly deviant MDVP parameters were reported in the group of patients with longer duration of hearing loss. Patients who received rehabilitation signiWcantly improved more than those who did not. In conclusion, it appears that cochlear implantation improves the auditory control of voice production in post-lingual deaf adults. Also, it is obvious that cochlear implantation at an early stage of hearing loss gives better results on voice control, especially if augmented with auditory rehabilitation.

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 2012

Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Al... more Voice problems negatively affect how children are perceived both by adults and by their peers. Although voice disorders are common in the pediatric population, there is still a lack of information available to clinicians regarding evaluation and treatment of pediatric voice disorders. The purpose of the present study was to develop an Arabic version of pediatric VHI and to test its validity and reliability. Fifty children with voice disorders were included in the study. The Arabic version of PVHI was derived in the standard way for test translation. The translated version was then administrated to the parents or caregiver of children with voice disorders and parents of 75 children with no history or symptoms of voice problems. Participants' responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity, and to compare the pathological group with the control group. The results showed high internal consistency and reliability of the Arabic version of PVHI (Cronbach's α=0.93 and r=0.95, respectively), and high item-domain and domain-total correlation (r=0.86-0.97). There was a statistically significant difference between the control and the voice disordered groups (P<0.001). The Arabic version of PVHI is considered to be a valid and reliable assessment tool used by the parents and caregivers of children with voice disorders to assess the severity of voice disorders in Arabic language speaking children.

The purpose of this research was to assess the usability of an Arabic version of TOPL-2 in identi... more The purpose of this research was to assess the usability of an Arabic version of TOPL-2 in identifying individuals with PLIs and distinguishing them from those without PLIs.

Journal of Voice, 2012

Background and Objective. Objective assessment of voice pathology has a growing interest nowadays... more Background and Objective. Objective assessment of voice pathology has a growing interest nowadays. Automatic speech/speaker recognition (ASR) systems are commonly deployed in voice pathology detection. The aim of this work was to develop a novel feature extraction method for ASR that incorporates distributions of voiced and unvoiced parts, and voice onset and offset characteristics in a time-frequency domain to detect voice pathology. Materials and Methods. The speech samples of 70 dysphonic patients with six different types of voice disorders and 50 normal subjects were analyzed. The Arabic spoken digits (1-10) were taken as an input. The proposed feature extraction method was embedded into the ASR system with Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifier to detect voice disorder.

European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, 2010

The voice handicap index (VHI) is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring a patient... more The voice handicap index (VHI) is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring a patient's self-assessment of voice severity. In some ways, it reflects the patient's quality of life. Although it has been recognized and widely applied to populations in European countries and to English speaking populations, it has not been used in its present forms in the Arabic speaking countries due to the specific language constraints of Euro-American terminology. The purposes of this study were to generate an Arabic version of VHI, to assess its reliability, and to apply it to a wide variety of normal and dysphonic individuals of Arabic descent. The Arabic version of VHI was derived in the standard way for test translation. The translated version was then administered to 65 patients with voice disorders and 65 control subjects. Participants' responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity, and to compare the pathological group with the control group. The Arabic VHI showed a significant high internal consistency and reliability (Cronbach's a = 0.97 and r = 0.89, respectively), high item-domain and domaintotal correlation (r = 0.73-0.94). There was a statistically significant difference between the control and the voicedisordered groups (P \ 0.001). The results of this study demonstrated strong internal consistency of the Arabic VHI. Thus, the Arabic version of VHI is considered to be a valid and reliable self-assessment tool for the severity of voice disorders in Arabic language speaking patients.

BioMedical Engineering OnLine, 2011

Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in ... more Background and objective: There has been a growing interest in objective assessment of speech in dysphonic patients for the classification of the type and severity of voice pathologies using automatic speech recognition (ASR). The aim of this work was to study the accuracy of the conventional ASR system (with Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) based front end and hidden Markov model (HMM) based back end) in recognizing the speech characteristics of people with pathological voice. Materials and methods: The speech samples of 62 dysphonic patients with six different types of voice disorders and 50 normal subjects were analyzed. The Arabic spoken digits were taken as an input. The distribution of the first four formants of the vowel /a/ was extracted to examine deviation of the formants from normal. Results: There was 100% recognition accuracy obtained for Arabic digits spoken by normal speakers. However, there was a significant loss of accuracy in the classifications while spoken by voice disordered subjects. Moreover, no significant improvement in ASR performance was achieved after assessing a subset of the individuals with disordered voices who underwent treatment.

The purpose of this research was to compare the results of the Arabic TOPL-2 as a psycholinguisti... more The purpose of this research was to compare the results of the Arabic TOPL-2 as a psycholinguistic-marker that measures the ability of individuals with developmental dysphasia DD and the results of both the Pragmatics Profile PP and Observational Rating Scale ORS subtests from CELF-4.