It's often easy to tell when colleagues are struggling with a cold—they sound sick. Maybe their voices are lower or have a nasally tone. Infections change the quality of our voices in various ways. But MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers are detecting these changes in COVID-19 patients even when these changes are too subtle for people to hear or even notice in themselves.

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By processing speech recordings of people infected with COVID-19 but not yet showing symptoms, these researchers found evidence of vocal biomarkers, or measurable indicators, of the disease. These biomarkers stem from disruptions the infection causes in the movement of muscles across the respiratory, laryngeal, and articulatory systems. A technology letter describing this research was recently published in IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

While this research is still in its early stages, the initial findings lay a framework for studying these vocal changes in greater detail. This work may also hold promise for using mobile apps to screen people for the disease, particularly those who are asymptomatic.