{"ID":2864662,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23225","arxiv_id":"2509.23225","title":"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.","short_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...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23225","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.23225v1","authors":"[\"Alisher Myrgyyassov\",\"Zhen Song\",\"Yu Sun\",\"Bruce Xiao Wang\",\"Min Ney Wong\",\"Yongping Zheng\"]","published":"2025-09-27T10:11:33Z","proceeding":"cs.CV","tasks":"[\"cs.CV\",\"cs.LG\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}