Visual speech signal representations according to an articulatory model based on X-ray motion films

A novel technique of visual-speech signal representations on X-ray motion films is proposed. The graphic implementation of the dynamic model is reconstructed from videotaped midsagittal X-ray motion films of the articulators during natural speech production of standard Chinese. An intelligent image processing technique is presented for quantizing the articulatory space and for describing the articulatory movements. The authors process separately counters of the motion picture by means of an edge detection and edge displacement analysis, which leads to a new class of intelligent coding methods capable of achieving compression ratio as high as 64:1. Based on this model a computer-aided instruction system of standard-Chinese language is established, in which the amount of data for 107 syllables is as low as 5 kbytes. The CAI system is briefly introduced