A fast and flexible MRI system for the study of dynamic vocal tract shaping

Purpose The aim of this work was to develop and evaluate an MRI-based system for study of dynamic vocal tract shaping during speech production, which provides high spatial and temporal resolution. Methods The proposed system utilizes (a) custom eight-channel upper airway coils that have high sensitivity to upper airway regions of interest, (b) two-dimensional golden angle spiral gradient echo acquisition, (c) on-the-fly view-sharing reconstruction, and (d) off-line temporal finite difference constrained reconstruction. The system also provides simultaneous noise-cancelled and temporally aligned audio. The system is evaluated in 3 healthy volunteers, and 1 tongue cancer patient, with a broad range of speech tasks. Results We report spatiotemporal resolutions of 2.4 × 2.4 mm2 every 12 ms for single-slice imaging, and 2.4 × 2.4 mm2 every 36 ms for three-slice imaging, which reflects roughly 7-fold acceleration over Nyquist sampling. This system demonstrates improved temporal fidelity in capturing rapid vocal tract shaping for tasks, such as producing consonant clusters in speech, and beat-boxing sounds. Novel acoustic-articulatory analysis was also demonstrated. Conclusion A synergistic combination of custom coils, spiral acquisitions, and constrained reconstruction enables visualization of rapid speech with high spatiotemporal resolution in multiple planes. Magn Reson Med 77:112–125, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.