The glottaltopograph: A method of analyzing high-speed images of the vocal folds

High-speed video provides a way to record physiological vibrational patterns of the vocal folds. Due to the large amount of data it produces, many methods have been proposed to reduce raw images to the underlying vibrational patterns. Previous methods either focus on a certain location on the vocal folds, or a certain frequency of vibrational activity. In this paper, we propose the “glottaltopograph” which is based on principal component analysis of pixels´ gray scale time courses. This method reveals the overall synchronization of the vibrational patterns of the vocal folds. Experimental results showed that this method is effective in visualizing pathological and normal vocal-fold vibrational patterns.