Efficacy of Cepstral Measures in Voice Disorder Diagnosis: A Literature Review

The acoustic analysis is one of the well-known methods for voice evaluation. In recent years, many studies have investigated the cepstral measures compared with the other former acoustic parameters. This review article evaluates the related studies in the cepstral areas to ascertain whether they are efficient in the diagnosis of dysphonia.

We reviewed the available research studies between 2009 and 2021 narratively in PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Science Direct databases. The searched keywords included “cepstral peak prominence”, “smoothed cepstral peak prominence”, “instrumental acoustic analysis”, “acoustic”, and “diagnosis”. The articles that investigated the power of Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) and its smoothed version (CPPS) to differentiate dysphonia versus normal voice have been included. However, the interventional studies that consider CPP and CPPS as one of their adjunct variables and studies that investigated the relationship of the cepstral measure with other parameters were not included.

Recent studies support the efficiency of CPP and CPPS to diagnose dysphonia.

It is reasonable for the voice care teams to use CPP and CPPS in the patients’ initial assessment and track the effects of treatment. However, according to the relatively limited number of studies in this area, more studies are required to clarify the efficacy of cepstral measures in different voice pathologies.