Innovative Wireless Voice Dosimetry for Improved Detection and Management of Voice Disorders

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY There is a fundamental gap in our ability to monitor and modify vocal behaviors that lead to phonotrauma in real-world settings, creating a critical barrier to effective voice disorder treatment. While voice therapy can effectively treat these disorders when patients consistently follow therapeutic guidelines, success is limited by the inability to objectively measure and modify vocal behaviors outside the clinic. Current voice dosimetry technologies, though valuable for research, remain impractical for clinical use due to being cumbersome, visibly obtrusive, and prohibitively expensive. This project will transform clinical voice assessment and treatment by validating a novel wireless ambulatory voice evaluator (WAVE) that integrates miniaturized sensors to capture voice and respiratory data in a discrete design about the size and weight of a U.S. quarter. The goal is to move voice dosimetry from the research lab to the clinic, enabling accurate real-world monitoring that provides actionable insights to clinicians and patients. This contribution will revolutionize the treatment of dysphonia by enabling, for the first time, widespread objective monitoring of vocal behaviors outside the clinic, shifting the paradigm of clinical management of voice disorders. Guided by strong preliminary data, this research will pursue three specific aims: 1) Optimize the WAVE wearable's real-time algorithms for accurate on-device vocal dose calculations, 2) Validate the novel WAVE device to enable accurate and scalable measurement of the Lombard effect in both laboratory and real-world environments, and 3) Validate respiratory monitoring capabilities of the WAVE for identifying disordered vocal behaviors. The approach is innovative because it represents the first wireless, multimodal system for voice dosimetry that integrates voice, environmental sound level, and respiratory monitoring in an unobtrusive wearable device suitable for extended use during daily activities. The successful completion of this work will provide voice clinicians with an evidence- based tool that enables objective documentation of patients' voice use patterns, allowing more informed clinical decision-making and targeted therapeutic interventions. Ultimately, this research pathway will improve therapeutic outcomes and reduce the substantial public health burden of voice disorders through improved monitoring of vocal behaviors and proactive prevention in at-risk populations.