Parkinson-Speech Analysis: Methods and Aims

Abstract:
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is one of the most frequent neurodegenerative diseases worldwide. Besides motor disorders, patients affected by this disease mostly suffer from a speech disorder named dysarthria. It is treated by different speech therapies. As a part of that, it is practice to observe the progress of the patients’ dysarthria by classifying its severity by one of different possible scales like the National Technical Institute of the Deaf (NTID) scale. These ratings are currently done by auditive assessments, which are very time consuming and expensive. This work presents the conception of a tool for acoustical analysis of Parkinson speech and classification of the severity of the speech disorder, with the goal to improve the success of the speech therapies and simplify the classification.