Signal And Acoustic Modeling For Speech And Communication Disorders

Signal and Acoustic Modeling for Speech and Communication Disorders demonstrates how speech signal processing and acoustic modeling can be instrumental in early detection and successful intervention with speech deficits resulting from Parkinson’s disease, Autism Spectrum disorder, cleft palate, intellectual disabilities, and neuro-motor impairments. Utilizing some of the most advanced methods in signal and acoustic modeling, this eminent group of contributors show how such technologies can inure to the benefit of healthcare and to society writ large. Paradoxically, what most of us take for granted still remains a Sisyphean battle for those with speech and language disorders, who struggle every day to make themselves heard and understood. The purpose of this book is to stimulate a vibrant discussion among speech scientists, system designers, and practitioners on how to best marshal the latest advances in signal and acoustic modeling to address some of the most challenging speech and communication disorders affecting a wide variety of patient populations across the world.

In communication acoustics, the communication channel consists of a sound source, a channel (acoustic and/or electric) and finally the receiver: the human auditory system, a complex and intricate system that shapes the way sound is heard. Thus, when developing techniques in communication acoustics, such as in speech, audio and aided hearing, it is important to understand the time–frequency–space resolution of hearing. This book facilitates the reader’s understanding and development of speech and audio techniques based on our knowledge of the auditory perceptual mechanisms by introducing the physical, signal-processing and psychophysical background to communication acoustics. It then provides a detailed explanation of sound technologies where a human listener is involved, including audio and speech techniques, sound quality measurement, hearing aids and audiology. Key features: Explains perceptually-based audio: the authors take a detailed but accessible engineering perspective on sound and hearing with a focus on the human place in the audio communications signal chain, from psychoacoustics and audiology to optimizing digital signal processing for human listening. Presents a wide overview of speech, from the human production of speech sounds and basics of phonetics to major speech technologies, recognition and synthesis of speech and methods for speech quality evaluation. Includes MATLAB examples that serve as an excellent basis for the reader’s own investigations into communication acoustics interaction schemes which intuitively combine touch, vision and voice for lifelike interactions.

Modern communication devices, such as mobile phones, teleconferencing systems, VoIP, etc., are often used in noisy and reverberant environments. Therefore, signals picked up by the microphones from telecommunication devices contain not only the desired near-end speech signal, but also interferences such as the background noise, far-end echoes produced by the loudspeaker, and reverberations of the desired source. These interferences degrade the fidelity and intelligibility of the near-end speech in human-to-human telecommunications and decrease the performance of human-to-machine interfaces (i.e., automatic speech recognition systems). The proposed book deals with the fundamental challenges of speech processing in modern communication, including speech enhancement, interference suppression, acoustic echo cancellation, relative transfer function identification, source localization, dereverberation, and beamforming in reverberant environments. Enhancement of speech signals is necessary whenever the source signal is corrupted by noise. In highly non-stationary noise environments, noise transients, and interferences may be extremely annoying. Acoustic echo cancellation is used to eliminate the acoustic coupling between the loudspeaker and the microphone of a communication device. Identification of the relative transfer function between sensors in response to a desired speech signal enables to derive a reference noise signal for suppressing directional or coherent noise sources. Source localization, dereverberation, and beamforming in reverberant environments further enable to increase the intelligibility of the near-end speech signal.

In recent years, scientific research and translation medicine have placed increased emphasis on computational methodology and data curation across many disciplines, both to advance underlying science and to instantiate precision-medicine protocols in the lab and in clinical practice. The nexus of concerns related to oncology, cardiology, and virology (SARS-CoV-2) presents a fortuitous context within which to examine the theory and practice of biomedical data curation. Innovative Data Integration and Conceptual Space Modeling for COVID, Cancer, and Cardiac Care argues that a well-rounded approach to data modeling should optimally embrace multiple perspectives inasmuch as data-modeling is neither a purely formal nor a purely conceptual discipline, but rather a hybrid of both. On the one hand, data models are designed for use by computer software components, and are, consequently, constrained by the mechanistic demands of software environments; data modeling strategies must accept the formal rigors imposed by unambiguous data-sharing and query-evaluation logic. In particular, data models are not well-suited for software-level deployment if such models do not translate seamlessly to clear strategies for querying data and ensuring data integrity as information is moved across multiple points. On the other hand, data modeling is, likewise, constrained by human conceptual tendencies, because the information which is managed by databases and data networks is ultimately intended to be visualized/utilized by humans as the end-user. Thus, at the intersection of both formal and humanistic methodology, data modeling takes on elements of both logico-mathematical frameworks (e.g., type systems and graph theory) and conceptual/philosophical paradigms (e.g., linguistics and cognitive science). The authors embrace this two-sided aspect of data models by seeking non-reductionistic points of convergence between formal and humanistic/conceptual viewpoints, and by leveraging biomedical contexts (viz., COVID, Cancer, and Cardiac Care) so as to provide motivating examples and case-studies in this volume. Provides an analysis of how conceptual spaces and related cognitive linguistic approaches can inspire programming and query-processing models Outlines the vital role that data modeling/curation has played in significant medical breakthroughs Presents readers with an overview of how information-management approaches intersect with precision medicine, providing case studies of data-modeling in concrete scientific practice Explores applications of image analysis and computer vision in the context of precision medicine Examines the role of technology in scientific publishing, replication studies, and dataset curation

Often cited as the most important human faculty, speech remains the focus of intensive study by specialists in such diverse fields as linguistics, psychology, physiology, engineering, computer science, speech pathology and neurology.

Audiology and Communication Disorders: An Overview, 2nd Edition is an innovative learning system that makes important audiology concepts accessible to beginning students, while providing instructors with the depth of coverage needed for more advanced students through a diverse range of assignable online articles, case studies, and multimedia activities developed to integrate seamlessly with the main text. Using the innovative communication chain model throughout the book, authors Larry Humes and Fred Bess cover structure and function of the auditory system; auditory disorders; audiologic measurement; screening for hearing loss and middle ear status; prosthetic devices for the hearing impaired; and rehabilitation and habilitation for individuals with impaired hearing. Boxed learning activities, case study vignettes, and commentaries help students understand key concepts and their clinical applications. The Second Edition has been updated with new content, new case studies, and additional disorders, and is supported by extensive online resources, including videos and animations that bring concepts to life, a wide range of articles, a pronunciation glossary, a question bank, labeling exercises, an interactive screening test, an anatomy and physiology image bank, case studies, and audio demos.

Speech sound production is one of the most complex human activities: it is also one of the least well understood. This is perhaps not altogether surprising as many of the complex neurological and physiological processes involved in the generation and execution of a speech utterance remain relatively inaccessible to direct investigation, and must be inferred from careful scrutiny of the output of the system -from details of the movements of the speech organs themselves and the acoustic consequences of such movements. Such investigation of the speech output have received considerable impetus during the last decade from major technological advancements in computer science and biological transducing, making it possible now to obtain large quantities of quantative data on many aspects of speech articulation and acoustics relatively easily. Keeping pace with these advancements in laboratory techniques have been developments in theoretical modelling of the speech production process. There are now a wide variety of different models available, reflecting the different disciplines involved -linguistics, speech science and technology, engineering and acoustics. The time seems ripe to attempt a synthesis of these different models and theories and thus provide a common forum for discussion of the complex problem of speech production. Such an activity would seem particularly timely also for those colleagues in speech technology seeking better, more accurate phonetic models as components in their speech synthesis and automatic speech recognition systems.

Signals and systems enjoy wide application in industry and daily life, and understanding basic concepts of the subject area is of importance to undergraduates majoring in engineering. With rigorous mathematical deduction, this introductory text book is helpful for students who study communications engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, and control engineering. Additionally, supplementary materials are provided for self-learners.