Expert System-Type Approach to Voice Disorders: Scheduling Botulinum Toxin Treatment for Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

Authors

Anthony P. Salvatore, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Amitava Biswas
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Bertha Manriquez
Michael P. Cannito
Robert J. Sinard

Publication Date

4-2006

Comments

UTEP-CS-04-34a.

Short version published in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Technologies InTech'04, Houston, Texas, December 2-4, 2004; full paper published in Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, 2006, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 332-338.

Abstract

One of the most debilitating disorders is adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD), a voice disorder caused by involuntary movements of the muscles of the larynx (voice box). For treating ADSD, botulinum toxin (BT) injections turned out to be very useful. However, the effects of BT are highly variable, so at present, there is no objective criterion of when such a BT treatment is necessary. It is therefore desirable to develop such a criterion.

In this paper, we show that traditional statistical techniques are unable to generate such a criterion, while a natural expert system approach seems to be capable of generating reasonably simple rules that determine when a BT treatment is necessary.