Presenter : Nuha Haleema

Faculty: Dr. Sreedevi N

Electromagnetic
Midsagittal
Articulography(EMM
Table Of Contents

01 02 03
Importance of What is EMMA Principle of Operation
measuring articulatory
movements
Table Of Contents

04 05 06
Uses of EMMA Procedure Articles
Advantages &
Disadvantages
 01
Importance of
measuring
articulatory
movements
Assessment of the individual motor subsystems of speech production mechanism
is crucial in defining the underlying speech pathophysiology and consequently
developing the optimal management programmes. (Abbs and DePaul, 1989;
Murdoch, 1996). This also increases the treatment efficacy.

But the success of the physiological approach had been hampered by lack of
appropriate safe and non-invasive physiological techniques.

Advances in technology have seen the introduction of several physiological

instruments capable of assessing articulatory dynamics in a non-invasive and safe
manner. Notable among these instruments are EPG, capable of recording in real
time tongue to palate contacts during speech, and EMA which can record real
time movements of the tongue, lips and jaw during speech production.
 02
What is EMMA?
Electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMMA) is a
technique for tracking articulatory movements during
speech using alternating electromagnetic fields.
 1980s
MIT System, 2009, 2020,
Movetrack AG200 NDI Wave NDI Vox

1988, 2002, 2011,

AG100 by Carstens AG500
AG501
Medizinelektronik
 Components
1. Plastic cube mounted with electromagnetic transmitters that surrounds the
head, neck and shoulder of the subject.

2. Coils with electrode sensors are temporarily glued to the subject’s

articulators. The electrodes are placed on the upper and lower gum, tip and
body of the tongue and lips.

3. An analog unit that converts the receivers signals into data.

4. A high quality microphone to record the acoustic signal of the productions.

This is then synced with the articulatory movements.

5. Software (EMALYSE) for data analysis that grafts the sampling of the
electrodes positions.

6. A calibration unit.
Components
Components
 03
Principle of
Operation
 Uses the principle of electromagnetic induction to measure the position
and movement of various points in and around the mouth

Current runs through Sensor coils produce

Electro magnetic
the transmitters on the current as they move
transmitters create
helmet through the mf via
variable mf
EMI

The composite signal

Distance between receiver
The current is separated out to
coil and transmitter coil:
induced is inversely determine the
determined by magnitude Current induced
proportional to the distance from each
of the alternating electrical alternates at same
cube of the individual coil, thus
signal induced in the frequency as
distance from the determining the
receiver coil transmitter coil
transmitter coils position of the sensor
in space.
 04
Uses,
Advantages &
Disadvantages
• Linguistic and forensic research
• Assessment of speech motor behavior of individuals with Parkinson's disease,

Uses of EMA
apraxia, dysarthria, or stuttering.

• Study articulatory kinematics in normal and disordered speakers including

children (Murdoch and Goozée, 2003) and adults (Kuruvilla et al., 2007) with
dysarthria subsequent to traumatic brain injury; adults with dysarthria post-stroke
(Chen et al., 2008)

• To investigate lingual kinematic strategies used to increase speech rate in younger

and older adults (Goozée et al., 2007).
• To study coarticulation since it allows a wide range of utterances to be recorded in a
single session
• In speech therapy as a biofeedback device (Murdoch,2011; van Lieshout, 2007)
• To provide real time video feedback of articulatory movements and thus has

Uses of EMA
advantages in second language acquisition to help with target pronunciation
(Suemitsu, Dang, Ito, & Tiede, 2015)

• To study acquired AOS (McNeil et al., 2010)

• For treatment of buccofacial apraxia (Katz, Carter & Levitt,2007)

• For synthesizing speech (Bocquelet et al., 2016)

• To provide accurate information on movement inside vocal tract for animated talking
heads (Badin et al., 2010; Gilbert et al., 2015)
 Advantages
High spatial accuracy and temporal resolution, participants and only moderately interfere with
yielding relatively precise information on speech production (speakers adapt within 10
articulatory gestures minutes; Dromey, Hunter, & Nissen, 2018).

Measure multiple articulators simultaneously and Articulographs restrict the participants’ movement
therefore allows the investigation of inter- less, they are not line-of-sight (such as, e.g.,
articulatory interactions OptoTrak), and they are not restricted to in-plane
visualization (such as, e.g., real-time MRI or
Study movements of articulators directly, as ultrasound tongue imaging).
opposed to more indirect acoustic methods

EMMA is biologically safe and minimally

invasive.
 Disadvantages
 Positioning of sensors is limited to the anterior articulators, for instance the full midsagittal
oral tract. tongue shape (as obtained using rtMRI)
 More problematic to place sensors on the more  Expensive
posterior part of the tongue (e.g., tongue dorsum)  Requires a relatively high level of technical
 Not possible to track velum movements without knowledge, prior training, and practice to use
discomfort to the participants successfully
 Not possible to place many sensors on an  The acoustics are changed when sensors are
articulator at the same time due to mutual attached (Meenakshi, Yarra, Yamini, & Ghosh,
electrical interference and increased 2014)..
perturbation of articulation
 The Carstens AG500 manual, states that the
minimum distance between sensors should be 8
mm), which again limits the number of points that
can be tracked on the articulators
How is
EMMA
different from
other
techniques?
 Palatography allows the study of articulations that
make contact with the palate such as some 
lingual consonants, but unlike EMMA, palatographs
cannot provide data on sounds which do not make
contact such as vowels.

Fluoroscopy and X-ray microbeam allow the investigation

of non-contact movements of the mouth like EMMA, but
expose subjects to ionizing radiation which limits the
amount of data that can be collected from a given
participant.
 05
Procedure
 Step 1: Calibration

Step 2:
Warming up
 Step 3:
Positioning the device
 Step 4:
Prepare and place the sensors

4 ref sensors: 6 movt sensors: Mark the sites with surgical ruler and
MR UL pen or dental colour applicator.
ML LL
N TB Coat the sensors in latex
UI TM
TT Place the sensors using tape, dental glue
LI or stomahesive wafer.
4 ref sensors: UI 6 movt sensors:
UL
MR Palate trace and LL
TB
ML bite plate TM
N TT
recording LI

These are crucial (particularly the biteplate recording) to ensure the

subsequent quality of the collected data
 For the palate trace, adhere one spare sensor to
the end of the participant’s dominant thumb
using Leukopor tape and instruct them to trace
Palate trace and the thumb from the back of the hard palate to
their front teeth. Can be explained by means of a
bite plate mouth puppet, which, due to its cartoonish look,
is also useful in decreasing participants’
recording potential anxiety. The palate trace should be
performed twice.
 For the biteplate recording, create a (reusable) fixed
triangular protractor with three sensors glued to it. The
protractor is pushed as far back as comfortable into the
corners of the participant’s mouth. The participant is
then asked to hold the protractor firmly between their
teeth and sit still for a few seconds while the biteplate
Palate trace and recording is made. The protractor must be in contact
with the molars in order to obtain a true occlusal

bite plate reference. Check the biteplate recording directly by

comparing the distances between all the reference
sensors and the three sensors on the biteplate, using
recording MATLAB. If these distances remain relatively
constant over time, this indicates that the position of
the reference sensors and the biteplate sensors is
correctly tracked.
 Step 4:
Prepare and place the sensors

4 ref sensors: 6 movt sensors: Mark the sites with surgical ruler and
MR UL pen or dental colour applicator.
ML LL
N TB Coat the sensors in latex
UI TM
TT Place the sensors using tape, dental glue
LI or stomahesive wafer.
 Step 5:
Present the stimuli

Depends on the task/research

Audio stimuli via inserts

Visual stimuli through a monitor

 Step 6:
Analyse the data
 06
Articles
 Spatial and dynamic aspects of retroflex production: An
ultrasound and EMA study of Kannada geminate stops
Alexei Kochetov, N. Sreedevi, Midula Kasim, R. Manjula.,
Journal of Phonetics, Volume 46, 2014

Kannada geminate retroflex sounds were investigated using EMA and ultrasound.
Participants: 5 male and 5 female native Kannada speakers (21-26 years old)
Material: 3 meaningful Kannada words with geminate voiceless stops/affricates of three
places of articulation: /atta/ (dental /t/) , /aʈʈa/ (retroflex /ʈ/), and /akka/ (velar /k/).
The target words were randomized together with other Kannada words used for a separate
study and presented on a laptop screen in Kannada orthography. Each word was presented
10 times in a row, with an inter-stimulus interval of 1 s.
Procedure: Ultrasound ( using PI 7.5 MHz SeeMore ultrasound probe) and EMA (using
AG500 EMA) was done.
Results: Retroflex gesture is dynamically complex and asymmetrical, involving
an anticipatory retraction of the tongue tip, followed by the raising of this
articulator towards the hard palate, and subsequent rapid flapping-out
movement during the closure and the release. The retroflex constriction and the
forward movement appear to be facilitated by the simultaneous fronting of the
posterior tongue body, flattening of the anterior tongue body, and lowering
of the jaw.
Compared to dental and velar stops, retroflex stops exert extensive anticipatory
and perseverative coarticulatory effects on adjacent vowels and inter-speech
intervals. With respect to the magnitude of the tongue tip displacement, the
anticipatory effects are greater than perseverative effects. The results of the
study thus offer a multi-faceted view of spatial and dynamic aspects of retroflex
stop production in Kannada, confirming and extending previous findings for
other Dravidian languages. The results also provide support for general models of
lingual consonant production and coarticulation.
 Consonant-vowel coarticulation patterns in Swedish and
Mandarin.
Gao, M., & Lundmark, M. S. (2023)
In 20th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences.

Cross linguistic study that compares the coarticulation patterns between consonant
and vowel (CV) in Mandarin Chinese and Southern Swedish.
Kinematic data were collected using the EMA for both languages and were subjected
to three types of CV time lag measurement, based on more or less equivalent
landmarks on lips and tongue.
Velocity based and acceleration based measurements were carried out.
The authors found rather consistent CV coordination patterns in these two
typologically different languages with both the velocity-based and the acceleration-
based measurements on the lips and the tongue body.
The most striking result to emerge from the data is the same effect of gender on the
variation of CV coarticulation in both languages, which has not been reported
previously.
Thank you!