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Voice Changes Help Diagnose TBI

The Notre Dame team Athletic Dept. has developed a tablet-based testing system that captures the voice of an individual and analyzes the speech for signs of a potential concussion anytime, anywhere, in real time. The benefit of this technology is that nearly 90 percent of concussions go unrecognized when they occur. The way it works is that an athelete speaks into a tablet equipped with the Notre Dame program before and after an event.

The two samples are then compared for TBI indicators, which include distorted vowels, hyper nasality and imprecise consonants. The systems has been validated independently by physicians in football and boxing matches. The testing was done in cooperation with James Moriarity, the University’s chief sports medicine physician, who has developed a series of innovative concussion testing studies.