Annually, approximately 250 total laryngectomies are carried out in the Netherlands. During this surgical procedure, the entire larynx is removed, mostly because of laryngeal or hypopharyngeal cancer. With this removal of the larynx, also the vocal cords are removed, and consequently the natural voice is lost. During a total laryngectomy, caudally, the larynx is separated from the trachea and t...

Humans can communicate their emotions by modulating facial expressions or the tone of their voice. Albeit numerous applications exist that enable machines to read facial emotions and recognize the content of verbal messages, methods for speech emotion recognition are still in their infancy. Yet, fast and reliable applications for emotion recognition are the obvious advancement of present 'intel...

BACKGROUND The swallowing deficits that result from oral or oropharyngeal resections vary considerably depending on the site, extension of the resection, and type of reconstruction. Most patients will experience some degree of dysphagia despite the reconstructive effort. Furthermore, a glossectomy is frequently associated with voice and speech difficulties. OBJECTIVES To characterize swallowi...

This paper presents an algorithm which works with oesophageal voice and aims to automatically calculate different measurements of shimmer parameter. The evaluation has required a novel processing for the detection of the periodicity cycles and instants in order to calculate amplitude perturbations of vocal signals. The designed algorithm performs the calculusof pitch in an automatic way with a ...

BACKGROUND Gastroesophageal reflux (GER) contributes to periprosthetic leakage after prosthetic voice rehabilitation. However, underlying mechanisms are unclear, and markers predicting anti-reflux therapy response are missing. METHODS We assessed epithelial-mesenchymal transition in 148 consecutive biopsies from 44 patients with/without fistula enlargement under dual-probe pH monitoring befor...