Spectral Features for Automatic Blind Intelligibility Estimation of Spastic Dysarthric Speech

In this paper, we explore the use of the standard ITU-T P.563 speech quality estimation algorithm for automatic assessment of dysarthric speech intelligibility. A linear mapping consisting of three salient P.563 internal features is proposed and shown to accurately estimate spastic dysarthric speech intelligibility. Delta-energy features are further proposed in order to characterize the atypical spectral dynamics and limited vowel space observed with spastic dysarthria. Experiments using the publiclyavailable Universal Access database (10 speaker patients) show that when salient delta-energy and internal P.563 features are used, correlations with subjective intelligibility ratings as high as 0.98 can be attained. Index Terms: Dysarthria, intelligibility, P.563, subjective quality, delta-energy