The TORGO database of acoustic and articulatory speech from speakers with dysarthria

This paper describes the acquisition of a new database of dysarthric speech in terms of aligned acoustics and articulatory data. This database currently includes data from seven individuals with speech impediments caused by cerebral palsy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and age- and gender-matched control subjects. Each of the individuals with speech impediments are given standardized assessments of speech-motor function by a speech-language pathologist. Acoustic data is obtained by one head-mounted and one directional microphone. Articulatory data is obtained by electromagnetic articulography, which allows the measurement of the tongue and other articulators during speech, and by 3D reconstruction from binocular video sequences. The stimuli are obtained from a variety of sources including the TIMIT database, lists of identified phonetic contrasts, and assessments of speech intelligibility. This paper also includes some analysis as to how dysarthric speech differs from non-dysarthric speech according to features such as length of phonemes, and pronunciation errors.