National Post (National Edition)
VOICE MAY BE THE KEY
TELEMEDICINE TESTING COULD SPOT POTENTIAL HEART PROBLEMS
When feeling anxious, nervous or frightened, it is often said that your heart is in your mouth. Now, scientists have found there may be some truth in the phrase. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the United States have discovered that when people are suffering from worrying heart problems it can be detected in their voice.
Although the vocal signposts are too subtle for humans to hear, scientists have created an artificially intelligent algorithm that can identify them.
In a study group of 108 people at risk of heart problems, nearly six in 10 who scored highly on the vocal risk assessment ended up in hospital within two years, compared with just three in 10 of those who had the lowest scores.
High scorers were also 2.6 times more likely to suffer major problems associated with coronary artery disease and three times more likely to have plaque build up in the heart's arteries than those with low scores.
“We can't hear these particular features ourselves,” said Dr. Jaskanwal Deep Singh Sara, a cardiology fellow at Mayo Clinic and the study's lead author.
“This technology is using machine learning to quantify something that isn't easily quantifiable for us using our human brains and our human ears.”
The researchers are hoping the technology could keep tabs on people remotely and flag who is most at risk.
Sara added: “Telemedicine (a video or phone diagnosis) is non-invasive, cost-effective and efficient, and has become increasingly important during the pandemic.
“We're not suggesting that voice-analysis would replace doctors or (existing) methods of health-care delivery, but we think there's a huge opportunity for voice technology to act as an adjunct to existing strategies.
“Providing a voice sample is very intuitive and even enjoyable for patients, and it could become (a) means for us to enhance patient management.”
The study represents the first time voice analysis has been used to predict heart health.
Researchers recruited 108 patients who had been referred for a coronary angiogram — an X-ray-imaging procedure used to assess the condition of the heart's arteries. Participants were asked to record three 30-second voice samples, one from a prepared text, and the others talking about one negative and one positive experience.
The Vocalis Health algorithm then analyzed participants' voice samples, noting traits such as frequency, amplitude, pitch and cadence, and compared them with a training set of over 10,000 voice samples collected in Israel.
They identified six features that were highly linked to coronary artery disease, such as minute fluctuations in frequency bands.
Over two years of followup, 58.3 per cent of people with high scores visited hospitals for chest pain, or had acute coronary syndrome, compared with 30.6 per cent of those with low scores.
Scientists are still unsure why certain voice features seem to be indicative of coronary artery disease but believe that the autonomic nervous system may play a role.
This part of the nervous system regulates bodily functions that are not under conscious control, which includes both the voice box and many aspects of the cardiovascular system, such as heart rate and blood pressure.
Autonomic nervous system disorders have also previously been linked to speech problems.
“It's definitely an exciting field, but there's still a lot of work to be done,” said Sara.
The study was presented at the American College of Cardiology's 71st Annual Scientific Session and published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.