# Acoustic to Articulatory Speech Inversion for Children with Velopharyngeal Insufficiency

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09489 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09489/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 19 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Sep 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Towards noise-robust speech inversion through multi-task learning with speech enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14516/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Traditional clinical approaches for assessing nasality, such as nasopharyngoscopy and nasometry, involve unpleasant experiences and are problematic for children. Speech Inversion (SI), a noninvasive technique, offers a promising alternative for estimating articulatory movement without the need for physical instrumentation. In this study, an SI system trained on nasalance data from healthy adults is augmented with source information from electroglottography and acoustically derived F0, periodic and aperiodic energy estimates as proxies for glottal control. This model achieves 16.92% relative improvement in Pearson Product-Moment Correlation (PPMC) compared to a previous SI system for nasalance estimation. To adapt the SI system for nasalance estimation in children with Velopharyngeal Insufficiency (VPI), the model initially trained on adult speech was fine-tuned using children with VPI data, yielding an 7.90% relative improvement in PPMC compared to its performance before fine-tuning.