Researchers Develop Augmented Tongue Ultrasound For Speech Therapy

Experiencing speaking difficulty or just had tongue surgery? A team of scientists and researchers have found a way to help humans through the use of an ultrasound to display movements of tongues to the patients, this method will a find to help patients with tongue surgery or stroke to improve their speech.

When a person has a speech articulation disorder, the best and recognized method of treatment is speech therapy through repetition exercises. The expert or therapist examines the patient’s word pronunciation and explains orally and by using drawings which is the best way to place articulators, particularly on the tongue. However with this new technological advancement, one can see the tongue, palate and teeth, as well as the face and lips, usually hidden inside the vocal tract using the algorithms in the new system.

Thomas Hueber from the University of Grenoble in France explained in a statement that “This “visual feedback” system works in such a ways that it produces better   words pronunciation, and is better be used for speech therapy and also for people interested in learning foreign or other languages

The system, newly published in the journal of Speech Communication, allows patients see their articulatory movements in no time, particularly the direction their tongues move so that they are aware of these movements therefore correction of pronunciation problems is nearly inevitable and much faster.

The machine-learning algorithm exploits and helps a probabilistic model which is based on a large articulatory database acquired from an “expert” human speaker able to pronounce all known sounds in one or more languages in just one speech with ease.

The model adapts to accommodate the morphology of each users over the course of a short phrase of which the patient must learn to pronounce a few phrases. This system is carried out in the laboratory for healthy speakers tested in a simplified version in a clinical trial for patients who have difficulty in speaking or have just had a tongue surgery.