Section: New Software and Platforms

Xarticulators

Keywords: Medical imaging - Natural language processing

Functional Description: The Xarticulators software is intended to delineate contours of speech articulators in X-ray and MR images, construct articulatory models and synthesize speech from X-ray films. This software provides tools to track contours automatically, semi-automatically or by hand, to make the visibility of contours easier, to add anatomical landmarks to speech articulators and to synchronize images with the sound. In addition we also added the possibility of processing digitized manual delineation results made on sheets of papers when no software is available. Xarticulators also enables the construction of adaptable linear articulatory models from the X-ray or MR images and incorporates acoustic simulation tools to synthesize speech signals from the vocal tract shape. Recent work was on the possibility of synthesizing speech from 2D-MRI films, and on the construction of better articulatory models for the velum, lips and epiglottis.

Release Functional Description: The new version allows MRI films to be processed and, above all, it offers a better transition from the shape of the vocal tract to the area function, which corresponds to an approximation of the vocal tract using a series of elementary tubes from the glottis to the lips.

News Of The Year: This year we completed the software to evaluate the articulatory model built from static images on dynamic images and we added a module to monitor the contour of the language using deep learning.

• Contact: Yves Laprie

• Publication: Articulatory model of the epiglottis