TY - JOUR
T1 - Reconstruction of vocal tract geometries from biomechanical simulations
AU - Dabbaghchian, Saeed
AU - Arnela, Marc
AU - Engwall, Olov
AU - Guasch, Oriol
N1 - Funding Information:
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 308874. The second and fourth authors would also like to acknowledge the support provided by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación and FEDER, EU, through Project GENIOVOX TEC2016-81107-P.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
PY - 2019/2/1
Y1 - 2019/2/1
N2 - Medical imaging techniques are usually utilized to acquire the vocal tract geometry in 3D, which may then be used, eg, for acoustic/fluid simulation. As an alternative, such a geometry may also be acquired from a biomechanical simulation, which allows to alter the anatomy and/or articulation to study a variety of configurations. In a biomechanical model, each physical structure is described by its geometry and its properties (such as mass, stiffness, and muscles). In such a model, the vocal tract itself does not have an explicit representation, since it is a cavity rather than a physical structure. Instead, its geometry is defined implicitly by all the structures surrounding the cavity, and such an implicit representation may not be suitable for visualization or for acoustic/fluid simulation. In this work, we propose a method to reconstruct the vocal tract geometry at each time step during the biomechanical simulation. Complexity of the problem, which arises from model alignment artifacts, is addressed by the proposed method. In addition to the main cavity, other small cavities, including the piriform fossa, the sublingual cavity, and the interdental space, can be reconstructed. These cavities may appear or disappear by the position of the larynx, the mandible, and the tongue. To illustrate our method, various static and temporal geometries of the vocal tract are reconstructed and visualized. As a proof of concept, the reconstructed geometries of three cardinal vowels are further used in an acoustic simulation, and the corresponding transfer functions are derived.
AB - Medical imaging techniques are usually utilized to acquire the vocal tract geometry in 3D, which may then be used, eg, for acoustic/fluid simulation. As an alternative, such a geometry may also be acquired from a biomechanical simulation, which allows to alter the anatomy and/or articulation to study a variety of configurations. In a biomechanical model, each physical structure is described by its geometry and its properties (such as mass, stiffness, and muscles). In such a model, the vocal tract itself does not have an explicit representation, since it is a cavity rather than a physical structure. Instead, its geometry is defined implicitly by all the structures surrounding the cavity, and such an implicit representation may not be suitable for visualization or for acoustic/fluid simulation. In this work, we propose a method to reconstruct the vocal tract geometry at each time step during the biomechanical simulation. Complexity of the problem, which arises from model alignment artifacts, is addressed by the proposed method. In addition to the main cavity, other small cavities, including the piriform fossa, the sublingual cavity, and the interdental space, can be reconstructed. These cavities may appear or disappear by the position of the larynx, the mandible, and the tongue. To illustrate our method, various static and temporal geometries of the vocal tract are reconstructed and visualized. As a proof of concept, the reconstructed geometries of three cardinal vowels are further used in an acoustic simulation, and the corresponding transfer functions are derived.
KW - acoustic model
KW - biomechanical model
KW - speech production
KW - vocal tract geometry
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056479850&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/cnm.3159
DO - 10.1002/cnm.3159
M3 - Article
C2 - 30242981
AN - SCOPUS:85056479850
SN - 2040-7939
VL - 35
JO - International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering
JF - International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering
IS - 2
M1 - e3159
ER -