arXiv · 2509.23225
UltraUNet: Real-Time Ultrasound Tongue Segmentation for Diverse Linguistic and Imaging Conditions
Abstract
Ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI) is a non-invasive and cost-effective tool for studying speech articulation, motor control, and related disorders. However, real-time tongue contour segmentation remains challenging due to low signal-to-noise ratios, imaging variability, and computational demands. We propose UltraUNet, a lightweight encoder-decoder architecture optimized for real-time segmentation of tongue contours in ultrasound images. UltraUNet incorporates domain-specific innovations such as lightweight Squeeze-and-Excitation blocks, Group Normalization for small-batch stability, and summation-based skip connections to reduce memory and computational overhead. It achieves 250 frames per second and integrates ultrasound-specific augmentations like denoising and blur simulation. Evaluations on 8 datasets demonstrate high accuracy and robustness, with single-dataset Dice = 0.855 and MSD = 0.993px, and cross-dataset Dice averaging 0.734 and 0.761. UltraUNet provides a fast, accurate solution for speech research, clinical diagnostics, and analysis of speech motor disorders.
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Alisher Myrgyyassov, Zhen Song, Yu Sun, Bruce Xiao Wang, Min Ney Wong, Yongping Zheng. 2025-09-27. UltraUNet: Real-Time Ultrasound Tongue Segmentation for Diverse Linguistic and Imaging Conditions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23225
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