title: Reconstructing the voice of an individual following laryngectomy.
abstract: This case study describes the generation of a synthetic voice resembling that of an individual before she underwent a laryngectomy. Recordings of this person (6-7 min) speaking prior to the operation were used to create the voice. Synthesis was based on statistical speech models and this method allows models pre-trained on many speakers to be adapted to resemble an individual voice. The results of a listening test in which participants were asked to judge the similarity of the synthetic voice to the pre-operation (target) voice are reported. Members of the patient's family were asked to make a similar judgment. These experiments show that, for most listeners, the voice is quite convincing despite the low quality and small quantity of adaptation data.
authors.affiliation: Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Division of Biomedical Computer Science, Department of Science & Engineering, School of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon, USA.
authors.forename: Zahoor Ahmad
authors.initials: ZA
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.forename: Phil
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Green
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Creer
authors.forename: Stuart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cunningham
mesh_terms: D003143:Communication Devices for People with Disabilities; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007825:Laryngectomy / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D007831:Larynx, Artificial; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010700:Phonetics; D014833:Voice Quality