Spatiotemporal Visualization of the Tongue Surface using Ultrasound and Kriging (SURFACES)

• Published in: Clinical linguistics & phonetics Vol. 19; no. 6-7; pp. 529 - 544
• Main Authors: Parthasarathy, Vijay, Stone, Maureen, Prince, Jerry L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Informa UK Ltd 01-09-2005; Taylor & Francis; Taylor & Francis, Ltd
• Subjects: Algorithms; Comparative Analysis; Computer Software; Deglutition - physiology; extrapolation; Humans; kriging; Motion; Movement - physiology; Software; spatiotemporal surface; Speech - physiology; Speech Evaluation; Statistical Analysis; SURFACES; Time Factors; Tongue; Tongue - diagnostic imaging; Tongue - physiology; Ultrasonography - methods; ultrasound; Visualization
• ISSN: 0269-9206; 1464-5076
• DOI: 10.1080/02699200500113632

Analyzing the motion of the human tongue surface provides valuable information about speech and swallowing. One method to analyse this motion is to acquire two-dimensional ultrasound images and extract the tongue surface contours from them. Quantitative and statistical analysis of these extracted contours is made difficult because of the absence of physical fleshpoint markers on them. In this research, this problem is overcome by pre-processing the contours using Kriging. Pre-processing includes extrapolating and resampling the contours on a regular spatial grid. The preprocessed contours can then be visualized as spatiotemporal surfaces. A dedicated user interface called SURFACES is designed to aid in the generation, visualization and quantitative comparisons of these spatiotemporal surfaces.