Lakshminarayanan A. V., Lee S., and McCutcheon M. J.
Title
MR imaging of the vocal tract during vowel production.
Source
Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. 1(1):71-6, 1991 Jan-Feb.
Abstract
Modeling of vocal tract behavior during speech production requires
accurate measurements of the entire vocal tract. To accomplish this,
magnetic resonance (MR) imaging was performed on a 0.5-T system with a
custom-made, double-loop, wrap-around coil. A midsagittal section of the
region from the glottis to the lips was imaged during sustained production
of five American English vowels. A gradient-spoiled gradient-echo sequence
was used to achieve a 4-second imaging time. Images showed clear profiles
of the entire vocal tract and exhibited essential articulatory features of
vowel production. It was possible to measure midsagittal widths at various
points along the vocal tract with 1-mm resolution. The measurements were
used to construct a tube model for prediction of the acoustic output of
the vocal tract. It is concluded that risk-free MR imaging promises to be
an important means of acquiring data for vocal tract modeling, with
applications to speech pathology, linguistics, and artificial speech.
