An encyclopedia about voice, swallowing, airway, coughing, & other head + neck disorders.

To look at something using strobe rather than continuous illumination. At our practice, we use strobe lighting to allow apparent slow motion videodocumentation of the vibration of the vocal folds. When, for example, the vocal folds produce the pitch of “middle C,” they vibrate at 252 hertz, or cycles, per second; hence, under ordinary illumination, this rapid vibration of the vocal folds is a blur. Under a common setting for the stroboscope, however, the vocal folds appear to be vibrating at just 2 cycles per second, regardless of the actual rate of vibration, which allows the vibratory dynamics to be observed.