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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/L51546/01
Title: AN OBJECTIVE VOICE QUALITY ASSESSMENT SYSTEM FOR STAGING AND TREATMENT MONITORING OF CANCER OF LARYNX
Principal Investigator: Ritchings, Professor RT
Other Investigators:
Conroy, Mr G Turega, Dr M
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Computation
Organisation: UMIST
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 22 September 1997 Ends: 21 September 1999 Value (£): 88,598
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Summary on Grant Application Form
The research aims to improve management of patients with cancer of the larynx by developing a computer system that gives an objective assessment of the quality of the voice of the patient undergoing treatment. While radiotherapy and laryngectomy can both produce high cure rates, the current trend is to justify the choice of treatment on voice function. This is currently assessed by a trained speech therapist using taped speech from the patient, a process that is both time consuming and subjective. The proposed project will use computational techniques involving spectral analysis of the speech and Neural Networks to provide a quantitative measure of the voice using electrolaryngography and acoustic data. The approach taken will follow the recent research by the investigators into the frequency structure of these data where there was visual evidence for a change in this structure during treatment. It is proposed to investigate the use of Neural-Networks to learn these structures and then recognise them in patients undergoing treatment. This approach will be evaluated off-line using both existing and new data taken from a large number of patients with speech therapists assessment, prior to developing an on-line system for use alongside the speech therapists for evaluation purposes.
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