Investigating speech reconstruction for laryngectomees for silent speech interfaces

Beiming Cao, Nordine Sebkhi, Arpan Bhavsar, Omer T. Inan, Robin Samlan, Ted Mau, Jun Wang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Silent speech interfaces (SSIs) are devices that convert nonaudio bio-signals to speech, which hold the potential of recovering quality speech for laryngectomees (people who have undergone laryngectomy). Although significant progress has been made, most of the recent SSI works focused on data collected from healthy speakers. SSIs for laryngectomees have rarely been investigated. In this study, we investigated the reconstruction of speech for two laryngectomees who either use tracheoesophageal puncture (TEP) or electro-larynx (EL) speech as their post-surgery communication mode. We reconstructed their speech using two SSI designs (1) real-time recognitionand- synthesis and (2) directly articulation-to-speech synthesis (ATS). The reconstructed speech samples were measured in subjective evaluation by 20 listeners in terms of naturalness and intelligibility. The results indicated that both designs increased the naturalness of alaryngeal speech. The real-time recognitionand- synthesis design obtained higher intelligibility in electrolarynx speech as well, while the ATS did not. These preliminary results suggest the real-time recognition-and-synthesis design may have a better potential for clinical applications (for laryngectomees) than ATS.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication22nd Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2021
PublisherInternational Speech Communication Association
Pages436-440
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781713836902
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes
Event22nd Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2021 - Brno, Czech Republic
Duration: Aug 30 2021Sep 3 2021

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH
Volume1
ISSN (Print)2308-457X
ISSN (Electronic)1990-9772

Conference

Conference22nd Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2021
Country/TerritoryCzech Republic
CityBrno
Period8/30/219/3/21

Keywords

  • Alaryngeal speech
  • Silent speech interfaces

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Signal Processing
  • Software
  • Modeling and Simulation

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