Acoustic Analysis and Non Linear Dynamics Applied to Voice Pathology Detection: A Review

A complete review of scientific studies and relevant patents oriented to voice pathology detection is presented in order to provide a good and quick reference for readers who want to understand how the field of automatic detection of voice disorders has evolved. Referenced works are divided into three groups, one focused on classical Acoustic Analysis of Voice (AAV), second on Non Linear Dynamics (NLD) and third on different and relevant patents presented in the development of systems for the automatic evaluation of pathological voices. The first group comprises not only typical acoustics but also noise measures and Cepstral analysis. In terms of NLD, both complexity measures and different versions of the entropies have been included, as well as other features. The patents referenced here have been presented from 2003 to 2011 in the patents offices located in United States, Europe and Asia.