Finite element modeling of the tongue

There is an increased need to study the human oropharyngeal anatomy for research in speech production, feeding motion, and breathing activities. Computational anatomic models are also useful to conduct virtual experiments without extensive use of human subjects, to plan and train surgeries. Recent improved methods for fast and high resolution imaging of internal organs, such as, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), three-dimensional Ultrasound, and Computer Tomography (CT) combined with automatic image extraction techniques, dynamic modeling techniques, and increased computation capacity, enhance possibilities to create realistic computational models. One central organ of the vocal tract is the tongue, which has been modeled using statistical parametric models [1, 2], explicit shape descriptions [3, 4], physiological models [5], and dynamical models (both spring-mass [6], and finite element models [7, 8, 9]). A recent survey [10] describes existing methods in detail. For many surgical simulation applications, tongue models need to support the following: