The Change of Vocal Tract Length in People with Parkinson’s Disease

Hypokinetic dysarthria is one of the early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and has been proposed for early detection and also for monitoring of the progression of the disease. PD reduces the control of vocal tract muscles such as the tongue and lips and, therefore the length of the active vocal tract is altered. However, the change in the vocal tract length due to the disease has not been investigated. The aim of this study was to determine the difference in the apparent vocal tract length (AVTL) between people with PD and age-matched control healthy people. The phoneme, /a/ from the UCI Parkinson’s Disease Classification Dataset and the Italian Parkinson’s Voice and Speech Dataset were used and AVTL was calculated based on the first four formants of the sustained phoneme (F
1
-F
4
). The results show a correlation between Parkinson’s disease and an increase in vocal tract length. The most sensitive feature was the AVTL calculated using the first formants of sustained phonemes (F
1
). The other significant finding reported in this article is that the difference is significant and only appeared in the male participants. However, the size of the database is not sufficiently large to identify the possible confounding factors such as the severity and duration of the disease, medication, age, and comorbidity factors.Clinical relevance—The outcomes of this research have the potential to improve the identification of early Parkinsonian dysarthria and monitor PD progression.