Convergent–Divergent and Other Patterns of Glottal Shape Change During Voice Production

What is it about?

Textbooks describing vocal fold vibration during voice production typically assume that the oscillating glottis alternates between a convergent shape during opening and a divergent shape during closing. In reality, however, this is not always the case. In this study, we employ a mucosal wave model to define different types of oscillatory glottal waveforms that may occur in clinical practice during voice production: COnvergent–DIvergent (CODI), COnvergent–COnvergent (COCO), DIvergent–DIvergent (DIDI), and DIvergent–COnvergent (DICO) waveforms, as well as their partial variants. To enable numerical classification of these glottal waveforms, we introduce the Upper and Lower Margin Quotients, which quantify the relative duration during which the upper vocal fold margin is at the glottal edge during the opening phase and the lower vocal fold margin is at the glottal edge during the closing phase, respectively. These measures allow different types of glottal waveforms to be distinguished numerically and open new possibilities for quantifying oscillatory vocal fold disorders.

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Why is it important?

It proposes a novel method for classifying and quantifying vocal fold vibration patterns.

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