TY - JOUR
T1 - Estimation of vocal tract area functions in children based on measurement of lip termination area and inverse acoustic mapping
AU - Bunton, Kate
AU - Story, Brad H.
AU - Titze, Ingo
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Although vocal tract area functions for adult talkers can be acquired with medical imaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), similar information concerning children's vocal tracts during speech production is difficult to obtain. This is largely because the demanding nature of the data collection tasks is not suitable for children. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of mapping formant frequencies measured from the [i, ae, a, u] vowels produced by three children (age range 4 to 6 years), to estimated vocal tract area functions. Formants were measured with a pitch-synchronous LPC approach, and the inverse mapping was based on calculations of acoustic sensitivity functions [Story, J. Acoust. Soc., Am., 119, 715-718]. In addition, the mapping was constrained by measuring the lip termination area from digital video frames collected simultaneously with the audio sample. Experimental results were augmented with speech simulations to provide some validation of the technique.
AB - Although vocal tract area functions for adult talkers can be acquired with medical imaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), similar information concerning children's vocal tracts during speech production is difficult to obtain. This is largely because the demanding nature of the data collection tasks is not suitable for children. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of mapping formant frequencies measured from the [i, ae, a, u] vowels produced by three children (age range 4 to 6 years), to estimated vocal tract area functions. Formants were measured with a pitch-synchronous LPC approach, and the inverse mapping was based on calculations of acoustic sensitivity functions [Story, J. Acoust. Soc., Am., 119, 715-718]. In addition, the mapping was constrained by measuring the lip termination area from digital video frames collected simultaneously with the audio sample. Experimental results were augmented with speech simulations to provide some validation of the technique.
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U2 - 10.1121/1.4799532
DO - 10.1121/1.4799532
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:84878977992
SN - 1939-800X
VL - 19
JO - Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics
JF - Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics
M1 - 060054
T2 - 21st International Congress on Acoustics, ICA 2013 - 165th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
Y2 - 2 June 2013 through 7 June 2013
ER -