A knowledge-based approach to identify aspiration by fuzzy logic

Aspiration is associated with the decreased Quality of Life Score (QOLS) in swallowing and chewing. It is caused by central nervous system disorders that include stroke, cerebral palsy, and intractable neurological diseases, disorders of oral cavity, pharynx or larynx and so on. Because the simple aging causes ingesting/swallowing disorders, it became one of serious health problems of the aging society. The evaluation of dysphagia is used by video fluoroscopy (VF), video endoscopy (VE), repetitive saliva swallow test, water swallow tests, and food tests. The advantage of VF and VE is the detailed evaluation and diagnosis for it, and the disadvantage of them is a higher risk of carcinogenesis by X-rays. Therefore, the authors propose a noninvasive swallow testing system by fuzzy logic. This study developed a fuzzy system that permits flexible modeling using breath information and sound intensity. The results confirmed that the fuzzy inference method yields a high accurate swallow estimates of 84.75%.