[MRT sequences as a database for a visual articulatory model]

Articulatory models can be used in phoniatrics for the visualisation of speech disorders, and can thus be used in teaching, the counselling of patients and their relatives, and in speech therapy. The articulatory model developed here was based on static MRI data of sustained sounds. MRI sequences are now being used to further refine the model with respect to speech movements. Medio-sagittal MRI sections were recorded for 12 consonants in the symmetrical context of the three point vowels [i:], [a:] and [u:] for this corpus. The recording-rate was eight images/s. The data show a strong influence of the vocalic context on the articulatory target-positions of all consonants. A method for the reduction of the MRI data for subsequent qualitative and quantitative analyses is presented.