Construction of Midsagittal Vocal Tract Videos from
CT, Ultrasound and Motion Capture Data
Abstract
This paper describes the creation of a movie file of an English speech sample from the Speech Accent Archive. The movie was created by combining ultrasound movies of the tongue, CT images of the vocal tract, and Vicon motion capture data from the skull and jaw. This movie shows all parts of the vocal tract that are related to speech and were recorded successfully. The movie is beneficial in that it places the ultrasound tongue movie in to the vocal tract context. When the subject pronounces [t], the ultrasound tongue line clearly makes contact with the alveolar ridge from the CT image. The movie is anticipated to be helpful to English as a Second Language learners in the acquisition of pronunciation, and future research should confirm the degree to which it is useful.
Senior Thesis (March 2008) by Toshifumi Masuda