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Speech Reconstruction in Post-Laryngectomised Patients by Formant Manipulation and Pitch Pro?le Generation

Sharifzadeh, H R, Ahmadi, F, McLoughlin, Ian Vince (2009) Speech Reconstruction in Post-Laryngectomised Patients by Formant Manipulation and Pitch Pro?le Generation. World Congress on Engineering 2009 (Volume 2), . pp. 1838-1843. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:48910)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

rehabilitation of the ability to speak in a natural sounding voice, for patients who suffer larynx and voice box deficiencies, has long been a dream for both patients and researchers working in this field. Removal of, or damage to, the voice box in a surgical operation such as laryngectomy, affects the pitch generation mechanism of the human voice production system. Such patients speech thus becomes hoarse, whisper like and sometimes not easily perceptible. This speech is obviously different to that from normal speakers, and will have lost many of the distinctive characteristics of the original speech. However, these patients typically retain the ability to whisper in a similar way to normal speakers. This paper aims to present an engineering approach to providing laryngectomy patients the capacity to regain their ability to speak with a more natural voice, and as a side effect, to allow them to conveniently use a mobile phone for communications. The method uses auditory information only, allied with analysis, formant insertion and novel methods for spectrum enhancement and formant smoothing within the reconstruction process. In effect, natural sounding speech is obtained from their spoken whisper-speech, without recourse to surgery. The method builds upon our previously published works using an analysis-by-synthesis approach for voice reconstruction with a modified CELP codec.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled keywords: 0, AUTOMATIC speech recognition, CELP codec, LARYNX -- Surgery, TRACHEA, VOICE, bionic voice, laryngectomy, rehabilitation, speech processing, whispered speech
Subjects: T Technology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Ian McLoughlin
Date Deposited: 07 Sep 2015 12:59 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:20 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/48910 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

McLoughlin, Ian Vince.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7111-2008
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