Dimensionality Reduction of a Pathological Voice Quality Assessment System Based on Gaussian Mixture Models and Short-Term Cepstral Parameters

Voice diseases have been increasing dramatically in recent times due mainly to unhealthy social habits and voice abuse. These diseases must be diagnosed and treated at an early stage, especially in the case of larynx cancer. It is widely recognized that vocal and voice diseases do not necessarily cause changes in voice quality as perceived by a listener. Acoustic analysis could be a useful tool to diagnose this type of disease. Preliminary research has shown that the detection of voice alterations can be carried out by means of Gaussian mixture models and short-term mel cepstral parameters complemented by frame energy together with first and second derivatives. This paper, using the F-Ratio and Fisher's discriminant ratio, will demonstrate that the detection of voice impairments can be performed using both mel cesptral vectors and their first derivative, ignoring the second derivative.