Nasometric and Acoustic Analysis in Experimentally Induced Velopharyngeal Insufficiency in Human

사람에서 유발시킨 구개인두부전증의 비음도와 음향학적 분석

Many tools have been used to evaluate the voice abnormalities of velopharyngeal insufficiency(VPI). The aim of study was to obtain the objective evaluation method of VPI by comparing the acoustic and nasalance data of experimentally induced VPI group and those of normal control group. Ten healthy young men were included in this study Mild and severe VPI were experimentally induced by retracting velopharyngeal movement. Using the nasometer, we obtained the nasalance score of the sustained oral vowels and those of three types of nasometer passages and the slope scores of nasogram of nasal words. And we analysed the change of formant frequencies for the sustained oral vowels and the changes of various parameters of hyper-tnasality by the computerized speech analysis system. The nasalance score of sustained /a/ was increased significantly in VPI conditions. There was no changes in the slope score of nasogram. On the acoustic speech analysis, the second formant frequencies of vowel /e/ and /i/ were decreased significantly in VPI conditions. This results suggested that the measurement of nasalance score and formant frequency might be useful in the evaluation of VPI.