Baseline characteristics of cervical auscultation signals during various head maneuvers

Cervical auscultation (CA) is an emerging method of assessing swallowing disorders that is both non-invasive and inexpensive. This technique utilizes microphones to detect acoustic sounds produced by swallowing activity and characterize its behavior. Though some properties of swallowing sounds are known, there is still a need for a complete understanding of the baseline characteristics of cervical auscultation signals as well as how they change due to the patient's head motion, age, and sex. In order to examine these parameters, data was collected from 56 healthy adult participants that performed six different head movement tasks without swallowing. After preprocessing the signal, features were extracted. Dependent variables were time domain, frequency domain and time-frequency domain features. Statistical tests showed that only the skewness and peak frequency were not statistically different for all tasks. The peak frequency results indicate that head movement does not significantly affect the microphone signal, and that it is unnecessary to filter out the lowest frequency components. No sex differences were observed in the extracted features, but several features exhibited age dependence.

[1]  Sergio Cerutti,et al.  Entropy, entropy rate, and pattern classification as tools to typify complexity in short heart period variability series , 2001, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[2]  Gary G. Yen,et al.  Wavelet packet feature extraction for vibration monitoring , 2000, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron..

[3]  Tom Chau,et al.  Baseline Characteristics of Dual-Axis Cervical Accelerometry Signals , 2010, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[4]  H M Finestone,et al.  Quantifying fluid intake in dysphagic stroke patients: a preliminary comparison of oral and nonoral strategies. , 2001, Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

[5]  T. Chau,et al.  Extraction of average neck flexion angle during swallowing in neutral and chin-tuck positions , 2009, BioMedical Engineering OnLine.

[6]  Tom Chau,et al.  Segmentation of Dual-Axis Swallowing Accelerometry Signals in Healthy Subjects With Analysis of Anthropometric Effects on Duration of Swallowing Activities , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[7]  Andy Lücking,et al.  Reliability and Validity of Cervical Auscultation , 2007, Dysphagia.

[8]  C. Wiles.  Neurogenic dysphagia. , 1991, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[9]  J. M. McCoy.  A hypothetical explanation for the aging of skin , 1990 .

[10]  T Chau,et al.  Time and time–frequency characterization of dual-axis swallowing accelerometry signals , 2008, Physiological measurement.

[11]  Jin Jiang,et al.  Time-frequency feature representation using energy concentration: An overview of recent advances , 2009, Digit. Signal Process..

[12]  J. Stein,et al.  Predictors of survival after severe dysphagic stroke , 2005, Journal of Neurology.

[13]  Abtin Tabaee,et al.  Patient‐Controlled Comparison of Flexible Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing With Sensory Testing (FEESST) and Videofluoroscopy , 2006, The Laryngoscope.

[14]  B. Murdoch,et al.  Acoustic Signature of the Normal Swallow: Characterization by Age, Gender, and Bolus Volume , 2002, The Annals of otology, rhinology, and laryngology.

[15]  Tom Chau,et al.  A radial basis classifier for the automatic detection of aspiration in children with dysphagia , 2006, Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.

[16]  R. Cavallazzi,et al.  Aspiration pneumonitis and aspiration pneumonia. , 2009, The New England journal of medicine.

[17]  David L. Donoho,et al.  De-noising by soft-thresholding , 1995, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[18]  Sagar V. Kamarthi,et al.  Feature Extraction From Wavelet Coefficients for Pattern Recognition Tasks , 1999, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[19]  Tom Chau,et al.  The effects of head movement on dual-axis cervical accelerometry signals , 2010, BMC Research Notes.

[20]  Tom Chau,et al.  A Method for Removal of Low Frequency Components Associated with Head Movements from Dual-Axis Swallowing Accelerometry Signals , 2012, PloS one.

[21]  R. H. Mills,et al.  Using cervical auscultation in the clinical dysphagia examination in long-term care , 2004, Dysphagia.

[22]  D W Baker,et al.  The effect of pneumonia on mortality among patients hospitalized for acute stroke , 2003, Neurology.

[23]  Paul Finn,et al.  Reliability and validity of cervical auscultation: A controlled comparison using videofluoroscopy , 2007, Dysphagia (New York. Print).

[24]  I. Braverman,et al.  A hypothetical explanation for the aging of skin. Chronologic alteration of the three-dimensional arrangement of collagen and elastic fibers in connective tissue. , 1989, The American journal of pathology.

[25]  J. Stierwalt,et al.  An Acoustic Profile of Normal Swallowing , 2005, Dysphagia.

[26]  D. Gottlieb,et al.  Validation of the 50 ml3 drinking test for evaluation of post-stroke dysphagia. , 1996, Disability and rehabilitation.

[27]  J. Brian Gray,et al.  Introduction to Linear Regression Analysis , 2002, Technometrics.

[28]  J. Logemann,et al.  Evaluation and treatment of swallowing disorders , 1983 .

[29]  Tom Chau,et al.  The design and testing of a novel mechanomyogram-driven switch controlled by small eyebrow movements , 2010, Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.

[30]  Lalit Kalra,et al.  Early Assessments of Dysphagia and Aspiration Risk in Acute Stroke Patients , 2003, Stroke.

[31]  Vance W. Berger,et al.  Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney Test , 2005 .

[32]  W. Kruskal,et al.  Use of Ranks in One-Criterion Variance Analysis , 1952 .

[33]  J. Stapleton,et al.  Heart murmurs simulated by arterial bruits in the neck , 1961 .

[34]  E. Basar,et al.  Wavelet entropy: a new tool for analysis of short duration brain electrical signals , 2001, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[35]  Abraham Lempel,et al.  On the Complexity of Finite Sequences , 1976, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[36]  Giuseppe Baselli,et al.  Measuring regularity by means of a corrected conditional entropy in sympathetic outflow , 1998, Biological Cybernetics.

[37]  Koji Takahashi,et al.  Methodology for detecting swallowing sounds , 2004, Dysphagia.

[38]  S L Hamlet,et al.  Interpreting the Sounds of Swallowing: Fluid Flow through the Cricopharyngeus , 1990, The Annals of otology, rhinology, and laryngology.

[39]  Michael J. Drinnan,et al.  Cervical Auscultation Synchronized with Images from Endoscopy Swallow Evaluations , 2007, Dysphagia.

[40]  C. M. Wiles,et al.  Neurogenic dysphagia: the role of the neurologist , 1998, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[41]  D T Barry,et al.  Muscle fatigue measured with evoked muscle vibrations , 1992, Muscle & nerve.