Morphological characteristics of male and female hypopharynx: A magnetic resonance imaging-based study.
Morphological characteristics of male and female hypopharynx: A magnetic resonance imaging-based study.
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DOI：
10.1121/1.5089220
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发表时间：
2019-02
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Ju Zhang;K. Honda;Jianguo Wei;T. Kitamura
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ju Zhang;K. Honda;Jianguo Wei;T. Kitamura
使用磁共振成像（MRI）进行三维（3D）声道可视化的研究表明，下咽腔，即喉腔和双侧梨状窝，可能是表达男性语音中说话人特征的声学位点。以往的研究主要研究男性的下咽部，而对女性的研究很少。本研究通过 MRI 探讨了两性受试者的下咽形态特征。元音处的 3D 数字声道是根据三名男性和四名女性中国受试者的 MRI 数据集重建的。对下咽腔进行几何测量。形态学观察和统计分析揭示了男性和女性受试者之间的共性和差异。研究发现，女性的喉腔形状与男性相似，类似于亥姆霍兹谐振器，而不是简单的直封闭管，双侧梨状窝腔表现出不对称性：两性的右侧都比左侧更长、更宽。至于跨元音的腔体大小，对于男性和女性受试者，观察到/i/中的喉腔和梨状窝均大于/a/中的喉腔和梨状窝。总结性别特征，与男性相比，女性受试者的特点是喉腔和梨状窝较小。
Studies with three-dimensional (3D) vocal tract visualization using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have suggested that hypopharyngeal cavities, i.e., laryngeal cavity and bilateral piriform fossa, may be the acoustic loci to express speaker characteristics in male speech sounds. Previous studies mainly investigated the hypopharynx in males but few for females. This study explored the hypopharynx morphological characteristics for the subjects in both genders by MRI. 3D numerical vocal tracts at vowels were reconstructed from the MRI datasets of three male and four female Chinese subjects. Geometrical measurements were conducted for the hypopharyngeal cavities. Morphological observations and statistical analyses revealed both commonalities and differences between the male and female subjects. The laryngeal cavity shapes in females were found similar to males resembling a Helmholtz resonator rather than a simple straight closed tube, and the bilateral piriform fossa cavities showed an asymmetry: the right is longer and wider than the left in both genders. As for the cavity size across vowels, for both the male and female subjects the laryngeal cavity and piriform fossa in /i/ were observed larger than those in /a/. To summarize gender characteristics, the female subjects were characterized by the smaller laryngeal cavity and piriform fossa compared with males.