Automatic Recognition and Evaluation of Tracheoesophageal Speech

Tracheoesophageal (TE) speech is a possibility to restore the ability to speak after laryngectomy, i.e. the removal of the larynx. TE speech often shows low audibility and intelligibility which also makes it a challenge to automatic speech recognition. We improved the recognition results by adapting a speech recognizer trained on normal, nonpathologic voices to single TE speakers by unsupervised HMM interpolation. In speech rehabilitation the patient’s voice quality has to be evaluated. As no objective classification means exists until now and an automation of this procedure is desirable we performed initial experiments for automatic evaluation of the intelligibility. We compared scoring results for TE speech from five experienced raters with the word accuracy from different types of speech recognizers. Correlation coefficients of about -0.8 are promising for future work.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: TSD
• Authors: Tino Haderlein, Stefan Steidl, Elmar Nöth, Frank Rosanowski, Maria Schuster
• Keywords: Automatic Speech Recognition, Signal Processing, Speech Recognizers, TE Speech, TSD 2004