About the project
The Speech Therapy Animation and imaging Resource (STAR) is a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Secondary Data Analysis Initiative (ESRC SDAI). The STAR websites allow users to see inside the vocal tract during disordered and non-disordered speech production, using:- ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI)
- magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- vocal-tract animation, based on MRI recordings.
The STAR project makes use of six pre-existing vocal-tract imaging datasets, collected for clinical and non-clinical research purposes, over a 9-year period (see Table 1). Additional MRI vocal-tract video is also available on the STAR sites via the Edinburgh MRI modelled speech corpus, which was funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and collected in 2022-2023.
Table 1: STAR project source datasets
| Funding council | Collection date | Project title | Data formats | Speech type | Speaker age |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AHRC (AH/L010380/1) | Jan 2014-March 2015 | Dynamic Dialects: integrating articulatory video to reveal the complexity of speech. | UTI, lip video, MRI, audio | modelled and non-disordered | Adult (18-65yo) |
| ESRC (RES ES-N008189-1) | Sept. 2016- Dec. 2019 | Changes in shape, space and time: the impact of position on the spatiotemporal and configurational articulatory properties of liquid consonants. | UTI, lip video | non-disordered | Adult (18-50) |
| EPSRC (EP/1027696/1) | Feb. 2011- July 2014 | Ultrax: real-time tongue tracking for speech therapy using ultrasound. | UTI, lip video | non-disordered and disordered | Child (5-13) |
| CSO (ETM 402) | Jan. 2015- Nov. 2016 | Ultraphonix: ultrasound visual biofeedback treatment for speech sound disorders in children. | UTI | disordered | Child (6-13) |
| Action Medical Research (GN2544) | April 2017-July 2018 | Visualising Speech: using ultrasound visual biofeedback to diagnose and treat speech disorders in children with cleft lip and palate. | UTI | disordered | Child (3-15) |
| EPSRC (EP/P02338X/1) | Aug. 2017- Nov 2020 | Ultrax2020: ultrasound technology for optimising the treatment of speech disorders. | UTI | disordered | Child (5-16) |
The project team
STAR is a collaborative project between the University of Glasgow, the University of Strathclyde and Queen Margaret University Edinburgh
Core team
- Principal Investigator: Dr Eleanor Lawson (University of Strathclyde)
- Co-Investigator: Dr Joanne Cleland (University of Strathclyde)
- Co-Investigator: Prof. Jane Stuart-Smith (University of Glasgow)
- Animator: Dr. Gregory Leplatre (Napier University)
- Web Developer: Brian Aitken (University of Glasgow)
- Model talker: Prof. Janet Beck (Professor Emerita, Queen Margaret University)
- Steve Cowen, QMU senior experimental officer
- Audio-visual technician: Andrew King (Queen Margaret University)
- Miriam Seifert, (Clinical advisor) North Bristol NHS Trust
Advisory panel
- Dr Sally Bates (Plymouth Marjon University)
- Dr Jonathan Preston (Syracuse University)
- Dr Claire Timmins (Strathclyde University)
- Dr Zoe Roxburgh (Speech Therapy Clinician, Houston Texas);
- Lisa Crampin (Yorkhill Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow);
- Carolyn Hawkes (NHS Lothian)