Tracking muscle deformation during speech from tagged and diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging.

Oral head and neck cancer is the sixth most common cancer worldwide. These tumors are usually treated by surgical removal of the affected tissue. The result of the surgery is a loss of muscle tissue, accompanied by scarring, reduced strength, and often reduced function. This paper explores the relationship between tongue muscle orientation and muscle deformation pattern in normal and post‐cancer surgery speakers. Our motivation is the need to better understand the mechanisms that underlie tongue motion, in order to better interpret clinical observations and to provide data that can help predict optimal surgical outcomes. This study uses diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to extract muscle fiber orientation, but it is not possible to image the muscle deformation in real‐time using DTI. On the other hand, tagged MRI can track muscle fiber bundles in real time, but the original fiber bundle is not visible. Therefore, this work develops a method to overlay muscle bundles from the DTI onto the corresponding locati...