Polygonal Mesh Comparison Applied to the Study of European Portuguese Sounds

摘要

The purpose of the authors 'study was to evaluate the feasibility of using a mesh comparison tool in the study of European Portuguese speech sounds. A large 3D MRI database from several speakers, including various sounds and contexts has been acquired. Segmentation, visualization, and analysis of such a large database are complex, time-consuming tasks, preventing the use of manual segmentation techniques. A more efficient semi-automatic method was devised to accomplish that task. After tongue segmentation, meshes were created from the segmented volumes and polygonal mesh comparison was used to assess differences between different sounds, vocalic contexts, syllabic positions and speakers. This is the first study using such an approach to analyze and compare tongue shape. This comparison method provides a qualitative measure enabling further insight into the main differences between speech sounds.