Sagittal section of subject m3, showing planes in which axial and coronal slices were measured

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Biomedical Imaging of Speech Production

• The Vowel MRI database, acquired while Professor Hasegawa-Johnson was a post-doc at UCLA. Segmented 3D images showing the vocal tracts of five talkers during production of the vowels of English. Even with only five talkers, we believe that this is currently the world's largest freely available 3D MRI database of speech production.
• Reciting the alphabet. Acquired at Carle Clinic in Urbana by Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Andrew Webb, Jim Ji, and Holly Tracey; 600ms/image.
• Microscopic imaging of a 1cm cubic specimen of excised cadaver tongue tissue. Tissue samples analyzed by Jerald Moon at the University of Iowa, and by David Kuehn, Wei Tian, and Mark Hasegawa-Johnson at the University of Illinois.
  • Coronal MRI sections, pixel size 59x59 microns, slice thickness 49 microns, imaged by Victor Schepkin at the University of Illinois BMRF.
  • Histologic sections of the same specimen, mounted at the University of Iowa.

Hypothesis: during speech, tongue shapes are created as the weighted sum of a small number of basic shapes. Experiment: we are currently testing the hypothesis through data reduction and factor analysis experiments applied to a series of tongue shapes derived from 3D MR images of the tongue during vowel and consonant production. Current Results: Factor Analysis of 3D Tongue Shapes (PowerPoint)

This database, collected at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and segmented at UCLA, includes coronal and axial image stacks portraying five different speakers during production of the ten monophthongal vowels of English. One speaker also produces a selection of consonants. Tongue and palate are outlined in the coronal image stack only. Voice recordings were made shortly before or after the imaging session, in both prone and sitting positions in a quiet recording studio.

CTMRedit: viewing, editing, and reconstruction software for MR and CT images (download site)