title: A High-resolution Atlas and Statistical Model of the Vocal Tract from Structural MRI.
abstract: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an essential tool in the study of muscle anatomy and functional activity in the tongue. Objective assessment of similarities and differences in tongue structure and function has been performed using unnormalized data, but this is biased by the differences in size, shape, and orientation of the structures. To remedy this, we propose a methodology to build a 3D vocal tract atlas based on structural MRI volumes from twenty normal subjects. We first constructed high-resolution volumes from three orthogonal stacks. We then removed extraneous data so that all 3D volumes contained the same anatomy. We used an unbiased diffeomorphic groupwise registration using a cross-correlation similarity metric. Principal component analysis was applied to the deformation fields to create a statistical model from the atlas. Various evaluations and applications were carried out to show the behaviour and utility of the atlas.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neural and Pain Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA. telephone: 410-706-1269, fax: 410-706-0865, jschant@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Jonghye
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Woo
authors.affiliation: Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, Baltimore MD 21231, USA, telephone: 410-502-1477, fax: 410-516-5566, junghoon@jhu.edu.
authors.forename: Junghoon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21218, telephone: 410-706-780, emurano1@jhmi.edu.
authors.forename: Emi Z
authors.initials: EZ
authors.lastname: Murano
authors.affiliation: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218; telephone: 410-516-5192, fxing1@jhu.edu.
authors.forename: Fangxu
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Xing
authors.affiliation: Department of Neural and Pain Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA. telephone: 410-706-1269, fax: 410-706-0865, maltali10@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Meena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Al-Talib
authors.affiliation: Department of Neural and Pain Science, Department of Orthodontics, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA. telephone: 410-706-1269, fax: 410-706-0865, mstone@umaryland.edu.
authors.forename: Maureen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stone
authors.affiliation: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218; telephone: 410-516-5192, prince@jhu.edu.
authors.forename: Jerry L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Prince
keywords: MRI; Statistical model; Tongue; Vocal tract atlas