Modeling a realistic 3D physiological tongue for visual speech synthesis

We built a 3D anatomically and biomechanically accurate physiological tongue model for use in visual speech synthesis. For the anatomical modeling part, the tongue and its muscles are constructed based on accurate medical data. Due to their complexity, muscles geometry and fiber arrangement are specified by a proposed interactive muscle marking method. For the biomechanical modeling part, a nonlinear, quasi-incompressible, hyperelastic constitutive model is applied for describing the tongue tissues. Particularly, tongue muscles are additionally endowed with an anisotropic constitutive model, which reflects the active and passive mechanical behavior of muscle fibers. The dynamic deformation of tongue is simulated based on finite element method (FEM). Simulation results of tongue movements subjected to certain muscle activations are presented and validated with experimental data. This tongue model can be applied in many areas, like media art, education, entertainment.