Large scale data acquisition of simultaneous MRI and speech

Abstract

We describe an arrangement for simultaneous recording of speech and vocal tract geometry in patients undergoing surgery involving this area. Experimental design is considered from an articulatory phonetic point of view. The speech 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 an adaptive signal processing algorithm. Finally, a vowel data set from pilot experiments is qualitatively compared both with validation data from the anechoic chamber and with Helmholtz resonances of the vocal tract volume, obtained using FEM.