A transversal study of the pitch variability of parkinsonian voices in read speech is presented. 30 patients suffering from Parkinson's disease (PD) and 32 healthy speakers were recorded while reading a text without voiceless phonemes. The fundamental frequency contours were calculated from the recordings, and the following measures were used for describing them: mean, minimum, maximum, and standard deviation of the estimated fundamental frequencies. Results based on these measures indicate that the influence of PD on some aspects of intonation can be masked by the effects of aging, especially for male voices. However, some parameters such as the relative fundamental frequency range exhibit lower correlations with age than with PD stage, as evaluated using the Hoehn and Yahr scale. These correlations between relative fundamental frequency range and PD stage reach moderate-to-high values in the case of women. Additionally, three parameters describing the form of the fundamental frequency modulation spectrum were investigated for correlation with age and PD stage. The study of this modulation spectrum provides some insight into the ability of the speakers to plan the intonation of full phrases. For both male and female populations, significant correlations were found between parameters obtained from the modulation spectrum of fundamental frequency and the PD stage. Nevertheless, the quantitative assessment of the performance of regression models built from these modulation parameters and fundamental frequency range suggests that such measures are likely to be of limited value in the early diagnosis of PD due to inter-speaker variability.

翻译：本文呈现了一项关于帕金森病语音在朗读语料中音高变异性的横向研究。研究记录了30名帕金森病（PD）患者和32名健康说话者朗读无清音音素文本时的语音数据。从录音中提取基频轮廓，并采用以下指标进行描述：估计基频的均值、最小值、最大值及标准差。基于这些指标的结果表明，PD对某些语调方面的影响可能被衰老效应所掩盖，尤其在男性嗓音中表现显著。然而，某些参数（如相对基频范围）与年龄的相关性低于其与PD病程（采用Hoehn和Yahr量表评估）的相关性。在女性群体中，相对基频范围与PD病程之间呈现中等到高度的相关性。此外，研究还考察了三个描述基频调制频谱形态的参数与年龄及PD病程的相关性。该调制频谱的分析为说话者规划完整短语语调的能力提供了见解。在男性和女性群体中，基频调制频谱参数与PD病程均存在显著相关性。然而，基于这些调制参数与基频范围构建的回归模型性能定量评估表明，由于说话者间差异性，此类指标在PD早期诊断中的价值可能有限。