Deep-learning-based segmentation of the vocal tract and articulators in real-time magnetic resonance images of speech.
Journal:
Computer methods and programs in biomedicine
Published Date:
Jan 1, 2021
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is increasingly used in studies of speech as it enables non-invasive visualisation of the vocal tract and articulators, thus providing information about their shape, size, motion and position. Extraction of this information for quantitative analysis is achieved using segmentation. Methods have been developed to segment the vocal tract, however, none of these also fully segment any articulators. The objective of this work was to develop a method to fully segment multiple groups of articulators as well as the vocal tract in two-dimensional MR images of speech, thus overcoming the limitations of existing methods.