Autor(es):
Ventura, Sandra Moreira Rua 
; Freitas, Diamantino Rui ; Tavares, João Manuel
Data: 2008
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/3530
Origem: Repositório Científico do Instituto Politécnico do Porto
Descrição
The tongue is the most important and dynamic articulator for speech formation, because
of its anatomic aspects (particularly, the large volume of this muscular organ
comparatively to the surrounding organs of the vocal tract) and also due to the wide
range of movements and flexibility that are involved. In speech communication
research, a variety of techniques have been used for measuring the three-dimensional
vocal tract shapes. More recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) becomes
common; mainly, because this technique allows the collection of a set of static and
dynamic images that can represent the entire vocal tract along any orientation. Over the
years, different anatomical organs of the vocal tract have been modelled; namely, 2D
and 3D tongue models, using parametric or statistical modelling procedures. Our aims
are to present and describe some 3D reconstructed models from MRI data, for one
subject uttering sustained articulations of some typical Portuguese sounds. Thus, we
present a 3D database of the tongue obtained by stack combinations with the subject
articulating Portuguese vowels. This 3D knowledge of the speech organs could be very
important; especially, for clinical purposes (for example, for the assessment of
articulatory impairments followed by tongue surgery in speech rehabilitation), and also
for a better understanding of acoustic theory in speech formation.
