Assessment of acoustic parameters of prosthetic voice and comparison with a normal voice

The various acoustic parameters obtained from TracheoEsophageal Laryngectomy subjects implanted with prosthesis are compared with that of a normal subject. In the advanced stage, laryngeal carcinoma leads to Laryngectomy, which is the removal of larynx. The replacement of speech is done with the help of a prosthetic device. The sentence material is chosen from IEEE corpus. A laryngectomee subject´s voice (alaryngeal speech) is recorded. Acoustic analysis include the following parameters: fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, intensity, and harmonics to noise ratio, formants and bandwidth. The parameters show that the Pitch, Jitter, Shimmer and Intensity are closer to normal speakers, HNR is lower, and Formants are comparatively higher. The study shows that the alaryngeal voice produced by a speech aid is as close to the normal voice, and pronunciations produced is similar to natural voice.