Imaging and quantification of glottal kinematics with ultrasound during speech

Abstract

Most examinations of glottal abduction and adduction during speech have employed laryngoscopic video or transillumination (Hoole, 2006). While these provide accurate information about timing of glottal movements, they are invasive and cannot provide absolute measurements about glottal width. At the same time, recent medical studies have used ultrasonic imaging to accurately capture glottal movements and laryngeal anatomy [Hu, J. Ultrasound Med. (2010); Jadcherla etal., Dysphagia (2006)]. We demonstrate novel methods of using ultrasound to measure both temporal and spatial aspects of glottal movements during speech. While previous work on glottal ultrasound has been limited by the need to manually analyze each acquired frame, we present methods to automatically quantify glottal aperture in ultrasound images. Finally, since glottal ultrasound does not interfere with the acquisition of supra-laryngeal articulatory data, we present the results of preliminary experiments that record laryngeal and supra-laryngeal speech movements simultaneously using ultrasound concurrently with electromagnetic articulometry. This allows the analysis of relative timing between movements in the two systems as well as examination of changes in timing or magnitude due to variables such as prosodic structure or speech rate. [Work supported by NIH.]