West LA Times

Bioengineers at UCLA have invented a thin, flexible device that adheres to the neck and translates the muscle movements of the larynx into audible speech.

"People with voice disorders, including those with pathological vocal cord conditions or who are recovering from laryngeal cancer surgeries, can often find it difficult or impossible to speak."

"A team of UCLA engineers has invented a soft, thin, stretchy device... that can be attached to the skin outside the throat to help people with dysfunctional vocal cords regain their voice function."

"The new bioelectric system... is able to detect movement in a person’s larynx muscles and translate those signals into audible speech with the assistance of machine-learning technology — with nearly 95% accuracy."

"The breakthrough is the latest in Chen’s efforts to help those with disabilities."

"The tiny new patch-like device is made up of two components... The two components each contain two layers... Utilizing a soft magnetoelastic sensing mechanism developed by Chen’s team... the device is capable of detecting changes in the magnetic field when it is altered as a result of mechanical forces — in this case, the movement of laryngeal muscles."

"Voice disorders are prevalent across all ages and demographic groups."

"Existing solutions such as handheld electro-larynx devices and tracheoesophageal- puncture procedures can be inconvenient, invasive or uncomfortable."

“In their experiments, the researchers tested the wearable technology on eight healthy adults... The overall prediction accuracy of the model was 94.68%... demonstrating that the sensing mechanism recognized their laryngeal movement signal and matched the corresponding sentence the participants wished to say."

"The research team plans to continue enlarging the vocabulary of the device through machine learning and to test it in people with speech disorders."

"The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the American Heart Association, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering."