Measurement of acoustic and anatomic changes in oral and maxillofacial surgery patients

TL;DR

This study presents a novel system for simultaneous recording of speech and vocal tract geometry using MRI and acoustic signals, enabling detailed analysis of surgical impacts on speech and anatomy.

Contribution

It introduces an integrated setup combining MRI imaging and speech recording with noise reduction, facilitating comprehensive analysis of oral and maxillofacial surgery effects.

Findings

Successful simultaneous MRI and speech recording system

Effective noise reduction in speech signals

Comparison of vowel data with theoretical resonance models

Abstract

We describe an arrangement for simultaneous recording of speech and geometry of vocal tract in patients undergoing surgery involving this area. Experimental design is considered from an articulatory phonetic point of view. The speech and noise signals are recorded with an acoustic-electrical arrangement. The vocal tract is simultaneously imaged with MRI. A MATLAB-based system controls the timing of speech recording and MR image acquisition. The speech signals are cleaned from acoustic MRI noise by a non-linear signal processing algorithm. Finally, a vowel data set from pilot experiments is compared with validation data from anechoic chamber as well as with Helmholtz resonances of the vocal tract volume.