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Open Access
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Plast Surg 2024; 57(S 01): S24-S29
DOI: 10.1055/s-0044-1788591
Original Article

Estimating Palatal and Pharyngeal Muscle Contraction in Hindi Syllable Pronunciation using Computational Modeling

Authors

  • Madhubari Vathulya 

    1   Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India

  • Subrato Sarkar

    2   Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, United States

  • Indra Vir Singh

    3   Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Rourkee, Uttarakhand, India

  • Tripta Prajapati

    4   Department of Radiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India

  • Pankaj Sharma 

    5   Department of Radiodiagnosis, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India

Funding We would like to acknowledge UCOST (Uttarakhand State Council for Science and Technology, Vigyan Sadan Block) for having provided us a grant to conduct this study (UCS&T/R&D-06/19–20/18033/1).
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Abstract

Introduction Speech, one of the main functions affected by cleft palate, involves a complex orchestra of sound deformation by various organs including the larynx, pharynx, epiglottis, palate, tongue, lip, and other structures complementing them. Although the effects of palatoplasty are traditionally evaluated subjectively, objective parameters have seldom been described to compare the pre- and postrepair functions. The study tries to extract the palatal and pharyngeal muscles while uttering various Hindi syllables and tries to find the percentage contraction of these structures as an objective assessment.

Materials and Methods Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images while uttering each syllable of the Hindi syllable are obtained by subjecting a healthy volunteer to a dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Using freeform geomagic software, 3D models of the structure of the pharynx and palate were created, which were then used to create a finite element model. Different anatomical constraints were applied to the muscles obtained. The finite element model was tested for convergence and a suitably fine mesh was used to obtain the results. The percentage of contraction of the palate and pharynx for uttering different syllables was thus evaluated.

Results The palate and the posterior pharyngeal walls yielded different contractions for different syllables independent of each other. The highest contraction for the palate and posterior pharyngeal wall was for the syllable /k/ and the lowest regarding the palate was for /h/ and /eː/ for the pharyngeal wall.

Conclusion Using computational modeling, quantification of speech in terms of percentage contraction of the palate and pharynx has been attempted for the Hindi language. Once validated with a larger population, the database may be used to quantify speech deformities due to structural pathologies in terms of palatal and pharyngeal contractions and help us assess the effectiveness of corrective surgeries for them.

Keywords

Devnagri script - computational modeling - speech - syllables - palate - pharyngeal - contraction


Publication History

Article published online:
18 July 2024

© 2024. Association of Plastic Surgeons of India. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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