High‐frame‐rate full‐vocal‐tract 3D dynamic speech imaging

• Published in: Magnetic resonance in medicine Vol. 77; no. 4; pp. 1619 - 1629
• Main Authors: Fu, Maojing, Barlaz, Marissa S., Holtrop, Joseph L., Perry, Jamie L., Kuehn, David P., Shosted, Ryan K., Liang, Zhi‐Pei, Sutton, Bradley P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-04-2017
• Subjects: Adult; Algorithms; cone navigation; dynamic speech imaging; Female; Humans; Image Enhancement - methods; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods; Imaging, Three-Dimensional - methods; Larynx - anatomy & histology; Larynx - diagnostic imaging; Larynx - physiology; low‐rank approximation; Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cine - methods; Male; partial separability; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; sparsity; Speech - physiology; Speech Production Measurement - methods; Tongue - anatomy & histology; Tongue - diagnostic imaging; Tongue - physiology; Young Adult; cone navigation; sparsity; low-rank approximation; dynamic speech imaging; partial separability
• ISSN: 0740-3194; 1522-2594
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.26248

Purpose
To achieve high temporal frame rate, high spatial resolution and full‐vocal‐tract coverage for three‐dimensional dynamic speech MRI by using low‐rank modeling and sparse sampling.
Methods
Three‐dimensional dynamic speech MRI is enabled by integrating a novel data acquisition strategy and an image reconstruction method with the partial separability model: (a) a self‐navigated sparse sampling strategy that accelerates data acquisition by collecting high‐nominal‐frame‐rate cone navigator sand imaging data within a single repetition time, and (b) are construction method that recovers high‐quality speech dynamics from sparse
(k,t)‐space data by enforcing joint low‐rank and spatiotemporal total variation constraints.
Results
The proposed method has been evaluated through in vivo experiments. A nominal temporal frame rate of 166 frames per second (defined based on a repetition time of 5.99 ms) was achieved for an imaging volume covering the entire vocal tract with a spatial resolution of 2.2 × 2.2 × 5.0 mm3. Practical utility of the proposed method was demonstrated via both validation experiments and a phonetics investigation.
Conclusion
Three‐dimensional dynamic speech imaging is possible with full‐vocal‐tract coverage, high spatial resolution and high nominal frame rate to provide dynamic speech data useful for phonetic studies. Magn Reson Med 77:1619–1629, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine