A magnetic resonance imaging study on the articulatory and acoustic speech parameters of Malay vowels

BioMedical Engineering OnLine

Alireza Zourmand⁴  Seyed Mostafa Mirhassani⁴  Hua-Nong Ting⁴  Shaik Ismail Bux³  Kwan Hoong Ng³  Mehmet Bilgen²  Mohd Amin Jalaludin¹ 

[1] Department of Otorhinolaringology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

[2] Radiology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Erciyes University, 38039 Kayseri, Turkey

[3] University Malaya Research Imaging Center and Department of Biomedical Imaging, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

[4] Biomedical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

关键词: Formant frequencies;    Acoustic parameters;    Active contour;    Malay vowel sounds;    Articulators’ movements;    Vocal tract shape;   

Others  :  1097944
DOI  :  10.1186/1475-925X-13-103

 received in 2013-09-20, accepted in 2014-07-14,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

The phonetic properties of six Malay vowels are investigated using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to visualize the vocal tract in order to obtain dynamic articulatory parameters during speech production. To resolve image blurring due to the tongue movement during the scanning process, a method based on active contour extraction is used to track tongue contours. The proposed method efficiently tracks tongue contours despite the partial blurring of MRI images. Consequently, the articulatory parameters that are effectively measured as tongue movement is observed, and the specific shape of the tongue and its position for all six uttered Malay vowels are determined.

Speech rehabilitation procedure demands some kind of visual perceivable prototype of speech articulation. To investigate the validity of the measured articulatory parameters based on acoustic theory of speech production, an acoustic analysis based on the uttered vowels by subjects has been performed. As the acoustic speech and articulatory parameters of uttered speech were examined, a correlation between formant frequencies and articulatory parameters was observed. The experiments reported a positive correlation between the constriction location of the tongue body and the first formant frequency, as well as a negative correlation between the constriction location of the tongue tip and the second formant frequency. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is an effective tool for the dynamic study of speech production.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Zourmand et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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