Abstract
A human laryngeal model, incorporating all the cartilages and the intrinsic muscles, was reconstructed based on MRI data. The vocal fold was represented as a multilayer structure with detailed inner components. The activation levels of the thyroarytenoid (TA) and cricothyroid (CT) muscles were systematically varied from zero to full activation allowing for the analysis of their interaction and influence on vocal fold dynamics and glottal flow. The finite element method was employed to calculate the vocal fold dynamics, while the one-dimensional Bernoulli equation was utilized to calculate the glottal flow. The analysis was focused on the muscle influence on the fundamental frequency (fo). We found that while CT and TA activation increased the fo in most of the conditions, TA activation resulted in a frequency drop when it was moderately activated. We show that this frequency drop was associated with the sudden increase of the vertical motion when the vibration transited from involving the whole tissue to mainly in the cover layer. The transition of the vibration pattern was caused by the increased body-cover stiffness ratio that resulted from TA activation.
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Acknowledgements
Thank Dr. Nathan Welham from the University of Wisconsin for sharing the MRI scan. The research described was supported by NIH Grant No. R15DC019229 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and National Science Foundation under Grant 245 No. 1652632. This work used Expanse platform at San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) through allocation CTS180004 from the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program, which is supported by the National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296 (Boerner et al. 2023). The open-source finite element package CalculiX (Dhondt and Wittig 1998) was used for the simulations in this study.
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X. Z. and Q. X. conceptualized the research plan. B.G. reconstructed the geometric model from the MRI scans and implemented the material models. W.J. optimized the material parameters and carried out the simulations. W.J., X. Z. and Q.X. analyzed simulation data and made figures. W.J. and Q.X. wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors contributed to the final draft.
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Video 1 CT = 0.2, TA = 0.6. Chaotic vibration.
Video 2 CT = 0.2, TA = 0.6. Posture
Video 3 CT = 0.8, TA = 0.0. Period vibration - Rotational Motion.
Video 4 CT = 0.8, TA = 0.0. Posture.
Video 5 CT = 0.8, TA = 0.2. Period vibration - Mostly Lateral.
Video 6 CT = 0.8, TA = 0.2. Posture.
Video 7 CT = 0.8, TA = 0.45. Period vibration - Increased Vertical Motion.
Video 8 CT = 0.8, TA = 0.45. Posture.
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Jiang, W., Geng, B., Zheng, X. et al. A computational study of the influence of thyroarytenoid and cricothyroid muscle interaction on vocal fold dynamics in an MRI-based human laryngeal model. Biomech Model Mechanobiol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-024-01869-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-024-01869-9