Tools for
Electroglottographic Analysis:
Software, Documentation and Databases
This page is maintained by Nathalie HENRICH
(GIPSA-Lab), Cédric
GENDROT (Laboratoire de
Phonétique et Phonologie)
and Alexis MICHAUD (Langues et Civilisations
à Tradition Orale).
The tools offered for download below have in common the use of the
derivative of the
electroglottographic signal, in light of research discussed in
Henrich et al. (2004).
In a nutshell: this
figure illustrates the presence of alternating positive and negative
peaks on the derivative of the electroglottographic signal. The
positive peak on the DEGG signal corresponds to the glottal closing
instant (GCI), i.e. the instant when the vocal fold contact area
increases with greatest velocity. The negative peak, which is the point
at which the EGG signal falls most steeply, corresponds to the glottal
opening instant (GOI), i.e. the instant when the vocal fold contact
area decreases with greatest velocity.
Visualization of the
closing and opening phases by simultaneous high speed and
electroglottographic recordings. Vertical bar indicates the moment in
time at which the visual image occurs with respect to the EGG and DEGG
signals. This example corresponds to a nonpathological male phonation
in mechanism 1, with f0=110 Hz. The EGG sampling frequency is 44 444 Hz
and the high-speed camera sampling frequency is 3704 frames/s. Author:
N. Henrich. The high-speed and EGG datafiles were kindly provided by a
team of the Department of Phoniatrics and Pediatric Audiology of the
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany).
The physiological correlates of
the peaks observed on the DEGG
signal were mainly studied by Childers et al., using simultaneous and
synchronized measurements of EGG and DEGG signals, inverse-filtered
derived glottal flow and glottal area measured from ultra-high speed
cinematography (Childers et al., 1990; Childers and Krishnamurthy,
1985; Childers and Larar, 1984; Childers et al., 1983a,b), along with a
theoretical study of the relation between the EGG/DEGG signals and the
glottal contact area calculated from a physical model (Childers
et al., 1986).
On the substantial basis of
these studies, DEGG peaks may be
considered as reliable indicators of glottal opening and closing
instants; the latter being defined by reference to the glottal flow, as
the instants when the flow starts to increase greatly from the baseline
(opening) and decrease greatly to the baseline (closing).
The duration between two
consecutive glottal closing instants
corresponds to a fundamental period; its inverse gives the fundamental
frequency of the voice. In the same manner, the duration between the
glottal opening instant and the consecutive glottal closing instant
corresponds to the open time. The open quotient can then be derived
from these two measures as the ratio between open time and fundamental
period.
In cases where the peaks do not
stand out clearly, the open
quotient cannot be calculated reliably; indeed, it can
be argued that in cases where opening takes place gradually and at
different
points in the glottis, resulting in double/multiple opening peaks, it
does
not make sense to talk of an "open quotient" at all.
Main research purpose:
investigation of phonation type
during rhymes (vowels and final consonants). Documentation available.
A version of this script without the interface for user verification of
the results is available online from the GitHub repository COVAREP
since 2014: click here to access it.
Modified version of
<peakdet>, by Sergi
Abadal and
Daniel Recasens (2009); main research purpose: study of the onset of
voicing. An
Instructions
Manual is available here.
Modified version of
<peakdet>, by Marc Brunelle and his
research assistant (2009); main research purpose: investigation of the
phonation types used in the prosodic systems of Southeast Asian
languages
The variety of the tools reflects the differences in the data to be
analyzed. In particular, N. Henrich's functions were developed for the
singing voice. They assume a
quasi-periodic signal. The others were developed for speech,
with attention to rapid changes in voice quality: breathy voice,
glottal constriction, laryngealization ("creaky voice"), i.e. phenomena
which result in large changes in cycle length from one glottal cycle to
the next. Peaks are detected individually by applying a threshold to
the derivative signal.
- Vu Ngoc Tuan, C.,
and d'Alessandro, C. (2000)
"Glottal closure detection using EGG and the wavelet transform", in
Proceedings 4th International Workshop on Advances in Quantitative
Laryngoscopy, Voice and Speech Research, Jena, pp. 147-154.
- de Cheveigné, A., Kawahara, H. (2002) "YIN, a fundamental
frequency
estimator for speech and music", J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 111, 1917-1930.
- Michaud, A.;
Vu-Ngoc, T. Glottalized and
Nonglottalized Tones under Emphasis: Open Quotient Curves Remain
Stable, F0 Curve is Modified. Speech Prosody 2004, Nara, Japan: 745-748
(2004).
- Michaud, A.: Final consonants and glottalization: new perspectives
from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61(2-3): 119-146 (2004).
Links to other databases :
- voice
material from the VOQUAL'03
workshop (Geneva, 2003)
REFERENCES: Cited references on
electroglottography
Childers, D. G., Hicks, D. M.,
Moore, G. P., and Alsaka, Y. A.
(1986). “A model for vocal fold vibratory motion, contact
area, and the electroglottogram,” J. Acous. Soc. Am. 80,
1309–1320.
Childers, D. G., Hicks, D. M., Moore, G. P., Eskenazi, L., and Lalwani,
A. L. (1990). “Electroglottography and vocal fold
physiology,” J. Speech Hear. Res. 33, 245–254.
Childers, D. G. and Krishnamurthy, A. K. (1985). “A critical
review of electroglottography,” CRC Critical Reviews in
Biomedical Engineering 12, 131–161.
Childers, D. G. and Larar, J. N. (1984). “Electroglottography
for laryngeal function assessment and speech analysis,” IEEE
Trans. Biomedical Engineering BME-31, 807–17.
Childers, D. G., Moore, G. P., Naik, J. M., Larar, J. N., and
Krishnamurthy, A. K. (1983a). “Assessment of laryngeal
function by simultaneous, synchronized measurement of speech,
electroglottography and ultra-high speed film,” in
Transcripts of the eleventh symposium : Care of the professional
voice., edited by L. V. , New York : Voice Foundation), pp.
234–44.
Childers, D. G., Naik, J. M., Larar, J. N., Krishnamurthy, A. K., and
Moore, G. P. (1983b). “Electroglottography, speech and
ultra-high speed cinematography,” in Vocal fold physiology
and biophysics of voice, edited by I. Titze and R. Scherer , Denver, CO
: Denver Center for the
Performing Arts), pp. 202–20.
Henrich N., d'Alessandro C., Castellengo M. and Doval B., 2004, "On
the use of the derivative of electroglottographic signals for
characterization of nonpathological voice phonation", Journal
of the Acoustical Society of America, 115(3), pp. 1321-1332
Howard, D.M.: Variation of
electrolaryngographically derived
closed
quotient for trained and untrained adult female singers. Journal of
Voice 9(2): 163-72 (1995).
Howard, D.M.; Lindsey, G.A.;
Allen, B.: Toward the
quantification of vocal efficiency. Journal of Voice 4(3): 205-12
(1990).
Rothenberg, M.; Mahshie, J.J.:
Monitoring vocal fold abduction
through vocal fold contact area. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research
31: 338-51 (1988).
Links
to sites
providing tutorials on electroglottography, with bibliographies
