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3D dynamic MRI of the vocal tract during natural speech
Journal article   Peer reviewed

3D dynamic MRI of the vocal tract during natural speech

Yongwan Lim, Yinghua Zhu, Sajan Goud Lingala, Dani Byrd, Shrikanth Narayanan and Krishna Shrinivas Nayak
Magnetic resonance in medicine, Vol.81(3), pp.1511-1520
03/2019
DOI: 10.1002/mrm.27570
PMCID: PMC6347527
PMID: 30390319

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Abstract

To develop and evaluate a technique for 3D dynamic MRI of the full vocal tract at high temporal resolution during natural speech. We demonstrate 2.4 × 2.4 × 5.8 mm spatial resolution, 61-ms temporal resolution, and a 200 × 200 × 70 mm FOV. The proposed method uses 3D gradient-echo imaging with a custom upper-airway coil, a minimum-phase slab excitation, stack-of-spirals readout, pseudo golden-angle view order in k -k , linear Cartesian order along k , and spatiotemporal finite difference constrained reconstruction, with 13-fold acceleration. This technique is evaluated using in vivo vocal tract airway data from 2 healthy subjects acquired at 1.5T scanner, 1 with synchronized audio, with 2 tasks during production of natural speech, and via comparison with interleaved multislice 2D dynamic MRI. This technique captured known dynamics of vocal tract articulators during natural speech tasks including tongue gestures during the production of consonants "s" and "l" and of consonant-vowel syllables, and was additionally consistent with 2D dynamic MRI. Coordination of lingual (tongue) movements for consonants is demonstrated via volume-of-interest analysis. Vocal tract area function dynamics revealed critical lingual constriction events along the length of the vocal tract for consonants and vowels. We demonstrate feasibility of 3D dynamic MRI of the full vocal tract, with spatiotemporal resolution adequate to visualize lingual movements for consonants and vocal tact shaping during natural productions of consonant-vowel syllables, without requiring multiple repetitions.
Adult Female Humans Image Processing, Computer-Assisted Imaging, Three-Dimensional - methods Language Larynx - diagnostic imaging Magnetic Resonance Imaging Male Movement Reproducibility of Results Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted Speech - physiology Speech Production Measurement - methods Tongue Video Recording

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