In this work, we consider the task of acoustic and articulatory feature based automatic
classification of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patients and healthy subjects using
speech tasks. In particular, we compare the roles of different types of speech tasks, namely
rehearsed speech, spontaneous speech and repeated words for this purpose. Simultaneous
articulatory and speech data were recorded from 8 healthy controls and 8 ALS patients
using AG501 for the classification experiments. In addition to typical acoustic and articulatory …

ALS: Rapid and progressive neuro degenerative disease that mainly involves the
degeneration of motor neurons responsible for controlling voluntary muscle movements like
chewing, walking, breathing and talking [1, 2]. ALS also affects the speech motor functions of
patients, thus causing dysarthria. Patients suffering from ALS have an average survival of 2
to 4 years. Annual incidence of ALS: Worldwide-1.9/100,000, India-1/100,000. Motivation: To
develop an health care application to detect ALS at an early stage.