Chao-Min Wu
Biomed. Eng. Ctr., Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH 43210-1002
Reiner Wilhelms
ATR International, Kyoto, Japan
An X-window-based graphics tool was developed to load serial images of histological sections of tongue specimens from a fetus available in the OSU College of Medicine, to enter contours and fiber directions of both intrinsic and extrinsic tongue muscles, and to implement a 3-D reconstruction of the tongue based on the assumption of lateral symmetry of the human tongue. It allows interactive loading of scanned-in images and their displays, sketching and labeling of various anatomical structures, and saving the sketches to files. The 3-D display of the sketches serves to construct a network of nodal points for a finite element representation. The intrinsic properties of the tissue, such as fiber direction, affiliation of local fiber directions with muscle types are compiled for each finite element. This tissue representation will be used later for the finite element analysis to simulate the deformation and movements of the tongue. The overall purpose of this study is to develop a computer model to represent the anatomy of the vocal tract and to simulate its movements by solving the equations of motion based on continuum mechanics. [Work supported by the Whitaker Foundation.]