Impaired to Understandable Sound Reconstruction

  • Research theme/s:

    Healthcare

  • Principal investigator (PI):

    Dr. Mohammad Yaqub

  • Researcher/s:

    Nil

  • Funding:

    MBZUAI

  • Department:

    Natural language processing

  • Co-PI:

    Dr. Shady Shehata

  • Student/s

    Karima Kadaoui

  • Collaborators / partners:

    Nil

Speech impairment is a life-altering disorder that prevents patients from communicating with their environment. In 2012, around 10% of the adult US population reported suffering from one [1]. Speech disorders impact a person’s employment, self-esteem, and quality of life, and can come hand in hand with other conditions such as ALS, strokes, and Parkinson’s disease [2]. These conditions usually require assistance from other people and the disrupted communication comes in the way of patients getting their needs met. We thus aim to build a system that can convert impaired speech to one that is understood by the patients’ environments.

[1] Morris, M.A., Meier, S.K., Griffin, J.M., Branda, M.E., Phelan, S.M.: Prevalence and etiologies of adult communication disabilities in the United States: Results from the 2012 national health interview survey. Disability and Health Journal. 9, 140–144 (2016).

[2] Cleveland Clinic: Dysarthria & Speech: Symptoms, causes, treatments, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17653-dysarthria.