Mouth Sounds: A Review of Acoustic Applications and Methodologies

Abstract

Mouth sounds serve several purposes, from the clinical diagnosis of diseases to emotional recognition. The following review aims to synthesize and discuss the different methods to apply, extract, analyze, and classify the acoustic features of mouth sounds. The most analyzed features were the zero-crossing rate, power/energy-based, and amplitude-based features in the time domain; and tonal-based, spectral-based, and cepstral features in the frequency domain. Regarding acoustic feature analysis, t-tests, variations of analysis of variance, and Pearson’s correlation tests were the most-used statistical tests used for feature evaluation, while the support vector machine and gaussian mixture models were the most used machine learning methods for pattern recognition. Neural networks were employed according to data availability. The main applications of mouth sound research were physical and mental condition monitoring. Nonetheless, other applications, such as communication, were included in the review. Finally, the limitations of the studies are discussed, indicating the need for standard procedures for mouth sound acquisition and analysis.