Recording Quality of Smartphone for Acoustic Analysis

Introduction: The U-health system supports health care services for prevention, diagnosis, medical treatment, and post-health management. Currently, various medical service systems such as telemedicine, emergent medical treatment, and private health monitoring are in use. Diagnosis of patient with glottic cancer using pathologic voice is one of private health monitoring. Aim: The purpose of this study was to compare the quality of pathologic voice in various recording methods using smartphone. Methods: Voice samples were collected simultaneously from 28 patients with glottic cancer using nine recording methods. Acoustic analysis was performed to assess the parameters including jitter, shimmer, noise to harmony, and cepstral prominence peak of voice quality using MDVP and ADSV Results: Correlations were calculated among the various parameters. All of the measured acoustic parameters showed the highest correlation to CPP. The high correlation method used for the iPhone involved a combination of a professional recording app and a unidirectional microphone, while the high correlation method used for an Android phone involved a combination of a professional recording app and an internal microphone. Conclusions: The present findings indicate that the smartphone devices of both iPhone and Android phone were useful for recording and analyzing pathologic voice for evaluation in clinical practice. We confirmed the possibility of using smartphone-based recording for spectral and cepstral analysis of pathologic voice. The value of the mobile device and its applications may be in its ability to provide meaningful, accurate, and timely informative guidance to the clinician by improving the availability and quality of patient’s findings. (J Clinical Otolaryngol 2016;27:286–294)