Acoustic Parameters in Persian-Speaking Patients with Dysphonia

Background & Objectives: Studying voice acoustic parameters in vowel production is a crucial component of every standard voice evaluation. Voice Analysis is non-invasive. Nowadays, computerized Voice Analysis is growing rapidly. Therefore, understanding acoustic parameters in healthy and unhealthy individuals is more significant than before. This research is a step toward boosting our knowledge about voice acoustic parameters. The main purpose of this research is to study acoustic characteristics in dysphonic and healthy Iranian individuals. Methods: The current study was descriptive-analytic. Vowel Analysis was conducted through Praat software. Voices of 50 dysphonic patients and 50 healthy participants were evaluated. The acoustic parameters included average, standard deviation, and range of fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, the number and degree of voice breaks, and harmonic to noise ratio. Results: In all studied acoustic characteristics, patients’ mean scores were higher than controls’ mean scores, except for harmonic to noise ratio which was higher in the healthy individuals. Although, the number of voice breaks in healthy male and female population was zero, it was 1.8 in male patients and 4.4 in female patients (P