Challenges in Concussion Detection Using Vocal Acoustic Biomarkers

Acoustic metrics extracted from speech have the potential to serve as novel biomarkers for a variety of neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions, as is evidenced by the rapidly growing corpus of research articles studying the links between brain impairments and speech. In this paper, we discuss the advantages and the disadvantages of speech biomarkers and the various challenges in the design and the implementation of portable speech-based diagnostic and assessment tools. Furthermore, we provide a case study, presenting our experiences in developing an assessment tool for the detection of mild traumatic brain injuries (concussions) and discuss the challenges in obtaining and analyzing large sets of speech recordings that can be used to study the impact of brain injuries on vocal features.