EP 52: Developing biomarkers for dysphagia assessment with Ervin Sejdić

What if a microphone and a few sensors placed on the neck could detect dysphagia; without access to FEES  or videofluoroscopy, maybe even without a dysphagia specialist in the room?

In this episode, we sit down with Prof. Ervin Sejdic, a biomedical engineer at the university of Toronto, whose research is changing the way we think about dysphagia assessment. Ervin leads work on High-Resolution Cervical Auscultation (HRCA) – a method that captures the sounds and vibrations of swallowing using sensors on the throat, then analyses that data with signal processing algorithms and artificial intelligence to identify aspiration risk and characterise swallowing function.

We talk about how to develop biomarkers for dysphagia, and how they could one day fill the gap of reliable swallowing assessment where FEES or videofluoroscopy may not be accessible; in hospitals, nursing homes, and community settings alike.

We discuss:

• What a computational biomarker is and why it matters clinically
• What HRCA looks like in practice: setup, sensors, and data
• What the algorithms can detect today, and what’s still on the horizon
• The path from research lab to clinical routine