Kinematic model for simulating mucosal wave phenomena on vocal folds

What is it about?

The article presents a simple kinematic model that simulates the propagation of mucosal waves on the surface of human vocal folds. The model allows for the simulation of both physiological and pathological findings and displays dynamic changes in the shape of the vocal folds during their oscillations in a view that existing medical methods do not commonly provide. It also generates synthetic kymograms of the vocal fold vibrations, which are comparable to those obtained laryngoscopically in clinical practice using high-speed endoscopic or videokymographic cameras. The model provides an educational and research tool for studying the properties of vocal fold vibrations.

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Why is it important?

Vocal fold vibrations are crucial for the production of human voice. Healthy vocal folds exhibit waves travelling on the vocal fold mucosa. Evaluation of the mucosal waves is important for evaluating voice disorders by laryngologists. While they are routinely evaluated visually, the knowledge on the physical phenomena related to mucosal wave propagation is limited. This paper provides a simple model which simulates mucosal waves on human vocal folds and generates synthetic kymographic images comparable to those obtained from patients in vivo. The vocal fold geometry and the vocal fold oscillations can be changed parametrically to simulate different phonatory conditions. The model code was created in Matlab and is freely available to professionals engaged in voice production research.

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