Modeling and analyzing the acoustic signatures of human swallowing mechanism

吞咽是人体最复杂的动作之一。 即使吞咽事件的顺序稍微延迟或不匹配，也可能使食物吸入肺部，并导致明显的发病率和死亡率。 特别是在老年人和残疾、中风、头颈部或脊髓损伤患者中，吞咽障碍相当常见。为了评估吞咽障碍，通常在进食期间用特殊的X射线（视频荧光镜）观察患者。由于我们最近的研究已经显示出有前途的吞咽声音分析的诊断能力，我们建议在这里调查使用声学分析吞咽评估的其他方法。使用现有的食管压力的测压数据，对应于视频荧光镜图像和吞咽声音，我们将开发一个全面的结构模型的吞咽机制和模型的声学签名的特定吞咽事件。我们将使用健康受试者和患者的数据验证和测试我们的模型。我们假设，模型的一些参数，即那些代表肌肉力量或结构运动之间的时间，将显着不同的两组之间，因此提供了一种手段，客观地探索吞咽障碍的原因。我们还建议开发一个集成和模块化系统的原型，以获取，降噪，分析和筛选吞咽和呼吸声信号，并使用无线技术将数据传输到远程临床诊断中心。

Swallowing is among the most complicated acts of the human body. Even a slight delay or mismatch in the sequence of swallowing events may allow food aspiration into the lung and causes appreciable morbidity and mortality. Especially in the elderly and in patients with disabilities, stroke, head-neck or spinal cord injuries, swallowing disorders are quite common. To assess swallowing disorders, patients are generally observed with a special X-ray (videofluroscopy) during feeding. Since our recent studies have shown promising diagnostic capabilities of swallowing sound analysis, we propose here to investigate other methods for swallowing assessment using acoustical analysis. Using available manometry data of the esophageal pressure in correspondence to videoflouroscopic images and swallowing sounds, we will develop a comprehensive structural model for the swallowing mechanism and model the acoustic signatures of specific swallowing events. We will validate and test our model with data obtained in both healthy subjects and patients. We hypothesize that some of the model's parameters, i.e. those that represent the muscle force or the timing between structural movements, will be significantly different between the two groups, and hence provide a means to explore objectively the cause of swallowing disorders. We also propose to develop a prototype of an integrated and modular system to acquire, denoise, analyze, and screen swallowing and breath sound signals, and to use wireless technology to transfer data to a remote clinical diagnostic center.