Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a serious inflammatory lung disease affecting millions of people around the world. Due to an obstructed airflow from the lungs, it also becomes manifest in patients' vocal behaviour. Of particular importance is the detection of an exacerbation episode, which marks an acute phase and often requires hospitalisation and treatment. Previous work has shown that it is possible to distinguish between a pre- and a post-treatment state using automatic analysis of read speech. In this contribution, we examine whether sustained vowels can provide a complementary lens for telling apart these two states. Using a cohort of 50 patients, we show that the inclusion of sustained vowels can improve performance to up to 79\% unweighted average recall, from a 71\% baseline using read speech. We further identify and interpret the most important acoustic features that characterise the manifestation of COPD in sustained vowels.

翻译：慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）是一种严重的炎症性肺部疾病，影响着全球数百万人。由于肺部气流受阻，该疾病亦在患者的发声行为中有所体现。其中，急性加重期的检测尤为重要，这标志着疾病进入急性阶段，通常需要住院治疗。先前的研究表明，通过对朗读语音进行自动分析，可以区分治疗前与治疗后的状态。在本研究中，我们探讨持续元音是否能为区分这两种状态提供一种补充性视角。基于50名患者的队列数据，我们证明加入持续元音可将未加权平均召回率从使用朗读语音的基线71%提升至最高79%。此外，我们进一步识别并阐释了表征COPD在持续元音中表现的最重要声学特征。