Speaker
Description
The tongue's complex interdigitating muscle architecture makes it one of the most challenging organs to image. Understanding its structure and dynamics is critical for assessing functional outcomes in tongue cancer patients, who frequently suffer long-term impairments in speech and swallowing after surgery. We first demonstrated that diffusion-weighted MRI with constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD) at 3T can resolve the tongue's crossing muscle fiber architecture in vivo. This work has since been validated against histology and used to quantify muscle strain during speech. Then, to enable the acquisition speeds required for dynamic imaging, we developed a dedicated 12-channel flexible receiver coil providing approximately twice the signal-to-noise ratio of a conventional head-and-neck coil. Using this coil, we developed volumetric real-time MRI of swallowing at 12 frames per second using compressed sensing, capturing full 3D bolus and laryngeal dynamics and enabling detection of aspiration outside a single midsagittal slice. Most recently, we extended this to 4D speech MRI, achieving sub-2 mm³ resolution at 50 ms temporal resolution combined with automated deep learning segmentation of the vocal tract. These advances collectively enable previously impossible visualization of tongue biomechanics, with direct applications in surgical planning and rehabilitation of tongue cancer patients.