In this research, an imaging system was built to work with a newly developed electronic device to help people produce sounds correctly. The system consists of two parts, the internal tongue contact pattern data collection and the external lip shape information analysis. The lip shape information was collected by processing images taken from people articulating different sounds. We developed an efficient color image segmentation technique to extract lip contour points and form a closed curve for shape analysis.

Project Sponsors:

Office of Research and Creative Activities, Brigham Young University (2004)

Collaborators:

Dr. Christopher Dromey, Dept. of ASPL, BYU

Dr. Sam Fletcher, Dept. of ASPL, BYU

Graduate Students:

Aaron Thomas, Daniel Bates, and Xiaoqian Xu

1. D. J. Lee, D.M. Bates, C. Dromey, and X. Xu, "A Vision System Performing Lip Shape Analysis for Speech Pathology Research", Proceedings of The 29th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, p. 1086-1091, Roanoke, Virginia, USA, November 2-6, 2003.

2. D.J. Lee, D.M. Bates, C. Dromey, X. Xu, and S.K. Antani, "An Imaging System Correlating Lip Shapes and Tongue Contact Patterns for Speech Pathology Research", Proceedings of The 16th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, p. 307-313, New York, NY, USA, June 26-27, 2003.

3. C. Dromey, D.J. Lee, S.G. Fletcher, D.M. Bates, and X. Xu, "Lip Shape Measures & Their Association With Tongue Contact Patterns", The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, USA, November, 2003.