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Marcos Faundez-Zanuy

Publications and source records attributed to Marcos Faundez-Zanuy.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

A multimodal approach for Parkinson disease analysis

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most frequent neurodegenerative disease with prevalence among general population reaching 0.1-1 %, and an annual incidence between 1.3-2.0/10000 inhabitants. The mean age at diagnosis of PD is 55 and most patients are between 50 and 80 years old. The most obvious symptoms are movement-related; these include tremor, rigidity, slowness of movement and walking difficulties. Frequently these are the symptoms that lead to the PD diagnoses. Later, thinking and behavioral problems may arise, and other symptoms include cognitive impairment and sensory, sleep and emotional problems. In this paper we will present an ongoing project that will evaluate if voice and handwriting analysis can be reliable predictors/indicators of swallowing and balance impairments in PD. An important advantage of voice and handwritten analysis is its low intrusiveness and easy implementation in clinical practice. Thus, if a significant correlation between these simple analyses and the gold standard video-fluoroscopic analysis will imply simpler and less stressing diagnostic test for the patients as well as the use of cheaper analysis systems.

q-bio.NC↗

HAIDA: Biometric technological therapy tools for neurorehabilitation of Cognitive Impairment

Dementia, and specially Alzheimer s disease (AD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) are one of the most important diseases suffered by elderly population. Music therapy is one of the most widely used non-pharmacological treatment in the field of cognitive impairments, given that music influences their mood, behavior, the decrease of anxiety, as well as facilitating reminiscence, emotional expressions and movement. In this work we present HAIDA, a multi-platform support system for Musical Therapy oriented to cognitive impairment, which includes not only therapy tools but also non-invasive biometric analysis, speech, activity and hand activity. At this moment the system is on use and recording the first sets of data.

cs.LG↗

Speaker Identification Experiments Under Gender De-Identification

The present work is based on the COST Action IC1206 for De-identification in multimedia content. It was performed to test four algorithms of voice modifications on a speech gender recognizer to find the degree of modification of pitch when the speech recognizer have the probability of success equal to the probability of failure. The purpose of this analysis is to assess the intensity of the speech tone modification, the quality, the reversibility and not-reversibility of the changes made. Keywords DeIdentification; Speech Algorithms

cs.SD↗

A Preliminary Study on Aging Examining Online Handwriting

In order to develop infocommunications devices so that the capabilities of the human brain may interact with the capabilities of any artificially cognitive system a deeper knowledge of aging is necessary. Especially if society does not want to exclude elder people and wants to develop automatic systems able to help and improve the quality of life of this group of population, healthy individuals as well as those with cognitive decline or other pathologies. This paper tries to establish the variations in handwriting tasks with the goal to obtain a better knowledge about aging. We present the correlation results between several parameters extracted from online handwriting and the age of the writers. It is based on BIOSECURID database, which consists of 400 people that provided several biometric traits, including online handwriting. The main idea is to identify those parameters that are more stable and those more age dependent. One challenging topic for disease diagnose is the differentiation between healthy and pathological aging. For this purpose, it is necessary to be aware of handwriting parameters that are, in general, not affected by aging and those who experiment changes, increase or decrease their values, because of it. This paper contributes to this research line analyzing a selected set of online handwriting parameters provided by a healthy group of population aged from 18 to 70 years. Preliminary results show that these parameters are not affected by aging and therefore, changes in their values can only be attributed to motor or cognitive disorders.

cs.HC↗

Digital Speech Algorithms for Speaker De-Identification

The present work is based on the COST Action IC1206 for De-identification in multimedia content. It was performed to test four algorithms of voice modifications on a speech gender recognizer to find the degree of modification of pitch when the speech recognizer have the probability of success equal to the probability of failure. The purpose of this analysis is to assess the intensity of the speech tone modification, the quality, the reversibility and not-reversibility of the changes made.

cs.SD↗

Non-linear predictive vector quantization of speech

In this paper we propose a Non-Linear Predictive Vector quantizer (PVQ) for speech coding, based on Multi-Layer Perceptrons. We also propose a method to evaluate if a quantizer is well designed, and if it exploits the correlation between consecutive outputs. Although the results of the Non-linear PVQ do not improve the results of the non-linear scalar predictor, we check that there is some room for the PVQ improvement.

cs.LG↗

Speaker recognition by means of a combination of linear and nonlinear predictive models

This paper deals the combination of nonlinear predictive models with classical LPCC parameterization for speaker recognition. It is shown that the combination of both a measure defined over LPCC coefficients and a measure defined over predictive analysis residual signal gives rise to an improvement over the classical method that considers only the LPCC coefficients. If the residual signal is obtained from a linear prediction analysis, the improvement is 2.63% (error rate drops from 6.31% to 3.68%) and if it is computed through a nonlinear predictive neural nets based model, the improvement is 3.68%. An efficient algorithm for reducing the computational burden is also proposed.

cs.SD↗

On the relevance of language in speaker recognition

This paper presents a new database collected from a bilingual speakers set (49), in two different languages: Spanish and Catalan. Phonetically there are significative differences between both languages. These differences have let us to establish several conclusions on the relevance of language in speaker recognition, using two methods: vector quantization and covariance matrices

eess.AS↗

Nonlinear predictive models computation in ADPCM schemes

Recently several papers have been published on nonlinear prediction applied to speech coding. At ICASSP98 we presented a system based on an ADPCM scheme with a nonlinear predictor based on a neural net. The most critical parameter was the training procedure in order to achieve good generalization capability and robustness against mismatch between training and testing conditions. In this paper, we propose several new approaches that improve the performance of the original system in up to 1.2dB of SEGSNR (using bayesian regularization). The variance of the SEGSNR between frames is also minimized, so the new scheme produces a more stable quality of the output.

cs.SD↗

On the relevance of bandwidth extension for speaker identification

In this paper we discuss the relevance of bandwidth extension for speaker identification tasks. Mainly we want to study if it is possible to recognize voices that have been bandwith extended. For this purpose, we created two different databases (microphonic and ISDN) of speech signals that were bandwidth extended from telephone bandwidth ([300, 3400] Hz) to full bandwidth ([100, 8000] Hz). We have evaluated different parameterizations, and we have found that the MELCEPST parameterization can take advantage of the bandwidth extension algorithms in several situations.

cs.SD↗

N-dimensional nonlinear prediction with MLP

In this paper we propose a Non-Linear Predictive Vector quantizer (PVQ) for speech coding, based on Multi-Layer Perceptrons. With this scheme we have improved the results of our previous ADPCM coder with nonlinear prediction, and we have reduced the bit rate up to 1 bit per sample.

cs.LG↗

Interblock redundancy reduction using QUADTREES

This paper applies the quadtree structure for image coding. The goal is to adapt the block size and thus to increase the compression ratio (without reducing SNR). Also, the computational time is not significatively increased. It has been applied to Block Truncation Coding of still images, and motion vector coding (interframe). An inter/intraframe application is also discussed.

eess.IV↗

A comparative study of several parameterizations for speaker recognition

This paper presents an exhaustive study about the robustness of several parameterizations, in speaker verification and identification tasks. We have studied several mismatch conditions: different recording sessions, microphones, and different languages (it has been obtained from a bilingual set of speakers). This study reveals that the combination of several parameterizations can improve the robustness in all the scenarios for both tasks, identification and verification. In addition, two different methods have been evaluated: vector quantization, and covariance matrices with an arithmetic-harmonic sphericity measure.

cs.SD↗

Applying multi-angled parallelism to Spanish topographical maps

Multi-Angled Parallelism (MAP) is a method to recognize lines in binary images. It is suitable to be implemented in parallel processing and image processing hardware. The binary image is transformed into directional planes, upon which, directional operators of erosion-dilation are iteratively applyed. From a set of basic operators, more complex ones are created, which let to extract the several types of lines. Each type is extracted with a different set of operations and so the lines are identified when extracted. In this paper, an overview of MAP is made, and it is adapted to line recognition in Spanish topographical maps, with the double purpose of testing the method in a real case and studying the process of adapting it to a custom application.

cs.CV↗

ADPCM with nonlinear prediction

Many speech coders are based on linear prediction coding (LPC), nevertheless with LPC is not possible to model the nonlinearities present in the speech signal. Because of this there is a growing interest for nonlinear techniques. In this paper we discuss ADPCM schemes with a nonlinear predictor based on neural nets, which yields an increase of 1-2.5dB in the SEGSNR over classical methods. This paper will discuss the block-adaptive and sample-adaptive predictions.

eess.AS↗

Speech segmentation using multilevel hybrid filters

A novel approach for speech segmentation is proposed, based on Multilevel Hybrid (mean/min) Filters (MHF) with the following features: An accurate transition location. Good performance in noisy environments (gaussian and impulsive noise). The proposed method is based on spectral changes, with the goal of segmenting the voice into homogeneous acoustic segments. This algorithm is being used for phoneticallysegmented speech coder, with successful results.

eess.AS↗

A new face database simultaneously acquired in visible, near infrared and thermal spectrum

In this paper we present a new database acquired with three different sensors (visible, near infrared and thermal) under different illumination conditions. This database consists of 41 people acquired in four different acquisition sessions, five images per session and three different illumination conditions. The total amount of pictures is 7.380 pictures. Experimental results are obtained through single sensor experiments as well as the combination of two and three sensors under different illumination conditions (natural, infrared and artificial illumination). We have found that the three spectral bands studied contribute in a nearly equal proportion to a combined system. Experimental results show a significant improvement combining the three spectrums, even when using a simple classifier and feature extractor. In six of the nine scenarios studied we obtained identification rates higher or equal to 98%, when using a trained combination rule, and two cases of nine when using a fixed rule.

cs.CV↗