1999 Volume 3 Issue 2 Pages 28-35
Videofluorography（VF）has been used often in recent years as a technique to evaluate the feeding/swallowing function．Only a few researchers，however，have used the results of VF to perform a dynamic study of feeding and swallowing movement and to evaluate the progress of feeding and swallowing rehabilitation．In the present study，we used video tape recorded from VF for three post-operative oral/pharyngeal cancer patients to dynamically represent the movement as time-series reconstructed images in order to objectively evaluate feeding functions．Using the video tape obtained from the patients，the movement of the tongue and epiglottis during swallowing was extracted as reconstructed images and the results were evaluated through the time-series visual analysis system．In order to observe the dynamics of each movement more clearly， we shifted the traced time-series reconstructed images of the tongue and epiglottis movement by 37 and 8 degrees respectively．This technique enabled us to compare the level of feeding and swallowing functions to evaluate the improvement of the tongue and epiglottis movement quantitatively and qualitatively．This analysis system which reconstructs the video through the time-series technique can be thought of as an effective method to compare each movement first and second the feeding and swallowing rehabilitation，and objectively and dynamically evaluate the movement of each particular section． Furthermore this time-series reconstructed analysis system seems to contribute significantly to the observation and evaluation of the changes of the soft tissues due to feeding and swallowing movement．
