Voice disability index using pitch rate

We have developed pitch rate (pitch detection ratio) in the speech segment as a voice disability index for use in free form speech data from smartphones. Its performance was compared with jitter, shimmer, and harmonic to noise ratio (HNR) indices. Conventionally, the performance of these indices is evaluated using long vowel sounds, but in this study we used the read speech of “Rainbow passage”. As a result, although jitter, shimmer, HNR displayed good performance for long vowel sounds, for the read speech data, performance of shimmer and HNR was significantly low. However, although jitter performed comparatively well for read speech, pitch rate was found to be a better indicator for voice disability between patients and healthy individuals.