C. Fougeron*, L. Crevier-Buchman*, C. Fredouille

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The DesPho-APaDy Project Developing an
Acoustic-phonetic Characterizationof Dysarthric
Speech in French
http//despho-apady.univ-avignon.fr/

• C. Fougeron, L. Crevier-Buchman, C.
  Fredouille, A. Ghio, C. Meunier,
• C. Chevrie-Muller, J.-F. Bonastre, A.
  Colazo-Simon, C. Delooze, D. Duez,
• C. Gendrot, T. Legou, N. Lévêque, C.
  Pillot-Loiseau, S. Pinto,
• G. Pouchoulin, D. Robert, J. Vaissiere, F.
  Viallet, C. Vincent
• Lab. de Phonétique et Phonologie, UMR 7018
  CNRS-Paris3/Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
• Université d'Avignon, CERI/LIA, Avignon
• Lab. Parole et Langage, UMR 6057 CNRS
  Aix-Marseille Univ., Aix-en-Provence

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What is Dysarthria?

• Neurologically-based speech disturbances
  resulting from damage to the central and/or
  peripheral nervous system that impair the
  transmission of neural messages to the muscles
  involved in speech production
• Deficit in the motor execution at any level of
  speech production
• respiratory
• phonatory
• supralaryngeal (velopharyngeal and orofacial)
• Requires the consideration of multiple speech
  parameters

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Rationale and Objectives of the Project

• - To constitute a searchable speech database of
  French dysarthric patients
• 1. for the preservation of existing databases
• 2. for the need of the acoustic description
• - To provide a systematic, quantified acoustic
• description of the speech patterns of French
• dysarthric speakers

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The Multiple-Field Query DatabaseWhy?

• Storage and organization of digitized dysarthric
  speech corpora (acoustic and physiological data)
  and associated patients clinical information
• Accessibility (for selected and protected use)
  through multiple-field queries (M/F, age, on/off
  stimulation,)

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The Multiple-Field Query DatabaseWhich data?

• The CCM (Claude Chevrie-Muller) Corpus recorded
  over the last 30 years,
• 1000 hours of disordered speech, 5000 patients
  adults and children
• 860 patients classified according to their
  neurological diagnosis
• 60 control speakers
• Data recorded
• Sound, EGG (ElectroGlottoGraph)

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The Multiple-Field Query DatabaseWhich data?

• The ANH (Aix-Neurology-Hospital)
• Corpus recorded for the past 15 years
• 990 patients,
• 160 control speakers
• Data recorded
• Sound, aerodynamic.

EVA2
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The Multiple-Field Query DatabaseHow?

• Getting the audio files
• Digitization of the analog 1/4 audio tapes
• speed change during each recording session
• real time auditory control of the recording
• Problems encountered poor quality recordings,
  some tapes in bad condition
• Transfer of DAT tapes
• To date, data from 180 patients have been
  digitized (analog tapes), 94 have been captured
  from DAT
• Segmentation per patient and per speech task
  (idem for the control population)
• Data were renamed for anonymous storage

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The Multiple-Field Query DatabaseHow?

• Designing the database
• Choice of a relational model to structure the
  data
• Definition of a set of objects, their attributes
  and the relation between them, related to the
  clinical environment
• Refinement by confronting the relational data
  model with empirical and real clinical data
• Developing the query interface
• Basic sociolinguistic information
• Clinical information
• Recording session information

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Dysarthric Speech in French Dimensions to be
considered when dealing with dysarthria

• Various parameters can be affected
• phonation
• articulation
• timing/rhythm
• prosody
• fluence
• Need of appropriate and sufficiently large
  quantities of speech data, homogenous in quality,
  and sufficiently documented by clinical
  information on the patient

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Dysarthric Speech in French Methods

• Methods and analysis procedures based on both
  phonetics and speech engineering approaches
• Manual analysis (by human experts) of the
  acoustic properties of the productions
• Automatic acoustic analysis of speech signals
• Continuous back and forth between these two
  techniques should gain from the potential of both
  approaches

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Dysarthric Speech in FrenchSelection of
Patients (Acoustic Study)

• Focus on neurophysiologic alterations of 3
  neurologic systems
• Pyramidal system ALS dysarthria (30 patients)
• Cerebellar system ataxic dysarthria (30
  patients)
• Extrapyramidal system Parkinsonian dysarthria
  (30 patients from the ANH corpus)
• Selection based on
• The clinical information, (the certainty of the
  diagnosis, the ongoing treatment, patient
  demographics)
• The severity of the dysarthria (work on
  dysarthria with relatively intelligible speech)

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Dysarthric Speech in FrenchPre-Processing of
the Audio Files

• In order to be able to perform both the manual
  and automatic acoustic analyses,
• Need of
• Orthographic transcriptions
• Automatic text-constrained phonetic alignment

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Pre-Processing of the Audio FilesOrthographic
TranscriptionsAutomatic Alignment

• 1. Orthographic transcriptions
• ltsgt ext vu puve i ale extalOR Mr
  Seguin n'avait jamais eu de bonheur avec ses
• Each speech production which differs from the
  original text was annotated using the SAMPA
  phonetic alphabet
• 2. Automatic text-constrained phonetic alignment

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Dysarthric Speech in French Automatic Phonetic
Alignment

• Evaluation of the automatic phonetic alignment
  comparing the production of phonemic labels and
  the boundaries annotated by two phoneticians

Male Female
control X X
Moderate dysarthria X X
Severe dysarthria X X
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Dysarthric Speech in French Automatic Phonetic
Alignment

• Results
• When comparing segment time boundaries produced
  manually and automatically, a shift above 20ms is
  observed
• 17 of control speakers,
• 24 of moderate dysarthric patients
• 56 of severe dysarthric patients
• But strong agreement (manual/automatic) for
  spectral measurements

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Conclusions/Perspectives

• Encouraging results for clinical research on
  speech disorders and speech science.
• Observing type and range of variations due to
  motor control deficit can help for a
  comprehensive model of speech variation for
  normal speakers.
• A better understanding of the variations that
  permit to consider a dysarthric speech as deviant
  could provide insights to the boundary between
  normal and pathological speech.

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Acknowledgments

• Funded by the ANR BLAN08-0125 of the French
  National Research Agency
• We deeply thank P. Clément, A. Nurenberg and O.
  Panseri who are also collaborating to this
  project
• For further information, please visit
• http//despho-apady.univ-avignon.fr

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