Creating and simulating a realistic physiological tongue model for speech production

Simulation of the tongue has important applications in biomechanics, medical science, linguistics, and graphics. The accuracy of the geometry, intrinsic structure and dynamic simulation of tongue are crucial for these applications. In this paper, we build a 3D anatomically and biomechanically accurate tongue model. For ensuring anatomical accuracy, the tongue mesh model is constructed based on accurate medical data and an interactive muscle marking method for specifying the muscle geometry and fiber arrangement. For ensuring biomechanical accuracy, a nonlinear, quasi-incompressible, isotropic, hyperelastic constitutive model is applied for describing the tongue tissues. Particularly, tongue muscles are additionally endowed with an anisotropic constitutive model, which reflects the active and passive mechanical behavior of muscle fibers. The dynamic simulation results of tongue movements subjected to certain muscle activations are presented and validated with experimental data, indicating the suitability for visual speech synthesis.