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Research of new online handwriting features in children with graphomotor difficulties
Gavenčiak, Michal ; Mekyska, Jiří (referee) ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (advisor)
In the Czech Republic, there is currently no objective method to diagnose graphomotor difficulties in children. Ongoing research uses modern digitizers to capture the hand-writing process and quantify its parameters. The first goal of this thesis is to develop software tools to faciliate work with the collected data, such as database validation and writing exercise rating, done by specialists. Another goal of this thesis is to design new on-line handwriting parameters which are then to be analysed on a cohort of school children from 2nd to 4th class of primary school (n=239). The implementation of two desktop programs on the .NET platform is described, among three new quantifying parameters based on the principles of isochrony, two-dimensional cross-correlation, and geometrical centroid. All three parameters show significant correlation (r = [0,2; 0,3])with the HPSQ-C rating in 2nd- and 4th-graders and correlation (𝜌= [0,2; 0,5]) with specialist’s subjective scores in all children from the cohort. The analysis suggests children with graphomotor difficulties struggle with regulating handwriting speed and working memory.
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Cancelling noise of magnetic resonance in recordings of speech
Vrba, Filip ; Galáž, Zoltán (referee) ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (advisor)
This thesis deals with the removal of noise in speech recordings that have been recorded in an MRI environment. For this purpose, the Nvidia RTX Voice technology, the VST plug-in module Noisereduce and a self-designed method of subtractive de-noising of recordings are used. A program with a simple graphical interface in Python is implemented within the work to retrieve the recordings and then de-noise them using the proposed methods. The work includes measurements in a magnetic resonance environment with two microphones. The quality of the processed recordings is tested within the program using the STOI (Short-Time Objective Intelligibility Measure) method as well as the subjective analysis method within listening tests.
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Research of Advanced Online Handwriting Analysis Methods with a Special Focus on Assessment of Graphomotor Disabilities in School-aged Children
Zvončák, Vojtěch ; Havigerová,, Jana Marie (referee) ; Drotár,, Peter (referee) ; Mekyska, Jiří (advisor)
Grafomotorické dovednosti (GA) představují skupinu psychomotorických procesů, které se zapojují během kreslení a psaní. GA jsou nutnou prerekvizitou pro zvládání základních školních schopností, konkrétně psaní. Děti v první a druhé třídě mohou mít potíže s prováděním jednoduchých grafomotorických úkolů (GD) a později ve třetí a čtvrté třídě také se samotným psaním (HD). Narušení procesů spojených se psaním je obecně nazýváno jako vývojová dysgrafie (DD). Prevalence DD v České republice se pohybuje kolem 3–5 %. V současné době je DD hodnocena subjektivně týmem psychologů a speciálních pedagogů. V praxi stále chybí objektivní měřicí nástroj, který by umožňoval hodnocení GD a HD. Z tohoto důvodu se tato disertační práce zabývá identifikováním symptomů spojených s grafomotorickou neobratností u dětí školního věku a vývojem nových parametrů, které je budou kvantifikovat. Byl vytvořen komplexní GA protokol (36 úloh), který představuje prostředí, ve kterém se mohou projevit různé symptomy spojené s GD a HD. K těmto symptomům bylo přiřazeno 76 kvantifikujících parametrů. Dále byla navrhnuta nová škála grafomotorických obtíží (GDRS) založena na automatizovaném zpracování online píma. Nakonec byla prezentována a otestována nová sada parametrizačních technik založených na Tunable Q Factor Wavelet Transform (TQWT). Parametry TQWT dokážou kvantifikovat grafomotorickou obratnost nebo nedostatečný projev v jemné motorice. GDRS přestavuje nový, moderní a objektivní měřící nástroj, který doposud chyběl jak v České republice, tak v zahraničí. Použití škály by pomohlo modernizovat jak diagnostiku DD, tak reedukační/remediační proces. Další výzkum by tento nástroj mohl adaptovat i do jiných jazyků. Navíc, tato metodologie může být použita a optimalizována pro diagnostiku dalších nemocí a poruch, které ovlivňují grafomotorické dovednosti, například pro autismus, poruchu pozornosti s hyperaktivitou (ADHD) nebo dyspraxii (DCD).
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Recognition of music style from orchestral recording using Music Information Retrieval techniques
Jelínková, Jana ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (referee) ; Kiska, Tomáš (advisor)
As all genres of popular music, classical music consists of many different subgenres. The aim of this work is to recognize those subgenres from orchestral recordings. It is focused on the time period from the very end of 16th century to the beginning of 20th century, which means that Baroque era, Classical era and Romantic era are researched. The Music Information Retrieval (MIR) method was used to classify chosen subgenres. In the first phase of MIR method, parameters were extracted from musical recordings and were evaluated. Only the best parameters were used as input data for machine learning classifiers, to be specific: kNN (K-Nearest Neighbor), LDA (Linear Discriminant Analysis), GMM (Gaussian Mixture Models) and SVM (Support Vector Machines). In the final chapter, all the best results are summarized. According to the results, there is significant difference between the Baroque era and the other researched eras. This significant difference led to better identification of the Baroque era recordings. On the contrary, Classical era ended up to be relatively similar to Romantic era and therefore all classifiers had less success in identification of recordings from this era. The results are in line with music theory and characteristics of chosen musical eras.
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Differential analysis of multilingual corpus in patients with neurodegenerative diseases
Kováč, Daniel ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (referee) ; Mekyska, Jiří (advisor)
This diploma thesis focuses on the automated diagnosis of hypokinetic dysarthria in the multilingual speech corpus, which is a motor speech disorder that occurs in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. The automatic speech recognition approach to diagnosis is based on the acoustic analysis of speech and subsequent use of mathematical models. The popularity of this method is on the rise due to its objectivity and the possibility of working simultaneously on different languages. The aim of this work is to find out which acoustic parameters have high discriminative power and are universal for multiple languages. To achieve this, a statistical analysis of parameterized speech tasks and subsequent modelling by machine learning methods was used. The analyses were performed for Czech, American English, Hungarian and all languages together. It was found that only some parameters enable the diagnosis of the hypokinetic disorder and are, at the same time, universal for multiple languages. The relF2SD parameter shows the best results, followed by the NST parameter. When classifying speakers of all the languages together, the model achieves accuracy of 59 % and sensitivity of 72 %.
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Development of modern acoustic features quantifying hypokinetic dysarthria
Kowolowski, Alexander ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (referee) ; Galáž, Zoltán (advisor)
This work deals with designing and testing of new acoustic features for analysis of dysprosodic speech occurring in hypokinetic dysarthria patients. 41 new features for dysprosody quantification (describing melody, loudness, rhythm and pace) are presented and tested in this work. New features can be divided into 7 groups. Inside the groups, features vary by the used statistical values. First four groups are based on absolute differences and cumulative sums of fundamental frequency and short-time energy of the signal. Fifth group contains features based on multiples of this fundamental frequency and short-time energy combined into one global intonation feature. Sixth group contains global time features, which are made of divisions between conventional rhythm and pace features. Last group contains global features for quantification of whole dysprosody, made of divisions between global intonation and global time features. All features were tested on Czech Parkinsonian speech database PARCZ. First, kernel density estimation was made and plotted for all features. Then correlation analysis with medicinal metadata was made, first for all the features, then for global features only. Next classification and regression analysis were made, using classification and regression trees algorithm (CART). This analysis was first made for all the features separately, then for all the data at once and eventually a sequential floating feature selection was made, to find out the best fitting combination of features for the current matter. Even though none of the features emerged as a universal best, there were a few features, that were appearing as one of the best repeatedly and also there was a trend that there was a bigger drop between the best and the second best feature, marking it as a much better feature for the given matter, than the rest of the tested. Results are included in the conclusion together with the discussion.
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Music genre recognition using Music information retrieval techniques
Zemánková, Šárka ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (referee) ; Kiska, Tomáš (advisor)
This diploma work deals with music genre recognition using the techniques of Music Information Retrieval. It contains a brief description of the principle of this research area and its subfield called Music Genre Recognition. The following chapter includes selection of the most suitable parameters for describing music genres. This work further characterizes machine learning methods used in this field of research. The next chapter deals with the descriptions of music datasets created for genre classification studies. Subsequently, there is a draft and evaluation of the system for music genre recognition. The last part of this work describes the results of partial parameter analysis, dependence of genre classification accuracy on the amount of parameters and contains a discussion on the causes of classification accurancy for the individual genres.
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Research of modern articulation features for the analysis of hypokinetic dysarthria
Vrba, Filip ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (referee) ; Galáž, Zoltán (advisor)
This thesis deals with hypokinetic dysarthria, as a disorder of motor speech, which occurs in approximately 70% of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Two newly designed speech parameters for quantification of articulation within HD are analysed in this thesis. This parameters were validated on recording of both healthy and PD speakers. The theoretical part describes conventional and used methods of speech signal processing, parameterization and statistical analysis. In the part of the system implementation is described practical design of new parameters and also methods of their statistical evaluation by correlation analysis and machine learning. The aim of this work is to design new speech parameters for HD diagnostics. The proposed system was implemented in MATLAB software environment.
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Analysis of Speech Masked by Noise in Public Transport Vehicles
Kobližka, Martin ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (referee) ; Jirásek, Ondřej (advisor)
This work deals with the problems of noise and speech masking in public transport . The theoretical is focused on the perception of sound in terms of loudness and frequency. The practical part includes recording noise inside public transport vehicles and determining the loudness and masking thresholds by the Zwicker method using Matlab. Furthermore, speech recording in different dynamics, listening tests and their evaluation in terms of speech intelligibility.
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Semi-automatic computerized system for the segmentation of online handwriting
Gavenčiak, Michal ; Mekyska, Jiří (referee) ; Zvončák, Vojtěch (advisor)
The prevalence of developmental dysgraphia among school children is between 10-30%, yet in Czech Republic, there is no objective method to diagnose it or determine its severity. Past studies have shown the possibility of automatic diagnosis using digital data gathered using a digitizing tablet and a stylus. Data gathered within an ongoing study contain information on position, time stamp, tilt, pressure and azimuth of the stylus. These data are, however, unsuitable for further analysis due unspecified number of exercises contained in one SVC file. Within this thesis the data is analysed and a program, which is able to segment these data into units of exercises and display the processed data on the screen, is designed and implemented.
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