# UltraUNet: Real-Time Ultrasound Tongue Segmentation for Diverse Linguistic and Imaging Conditions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23225 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23225/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Group Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08494/) (2018)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [Attention U-Net: Learning Where to Look for the Pancreas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03999/) (2018)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [USE-Net: incorporating Squeeze-and-Excitation blocks into U-Net for prostate zonal segmentation of multi-institutional MRI datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08254/) (2019)
- [UltraSuite: A Repository of Ultrasound and Acoustic Data from Child Speech Therapy Sessions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00835/) (2019)
- [TaL: a synchronised multi-speaker corpus of ultrasound tongue imaging, audio, and lip videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09804/) (2020)
- [A CNN-based tool for automatic tongue contour tracking in ultrasound images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10210/) (2019)
- [Convolutional Networks with Oriented 1D Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15812/) (2023)
- [IrisNet: Deep Learning for Automatic and Real-time Tongue Contour Tracking in Ultrasound Video Data using Peripheral Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.03972/) (2019)
- [Deep Learning for Automatic Tracking of Tongue Surface in Real-time Ultrasound Videos, Landmarks instead of Contours](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08808/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Automated Measurement of Geniohyoid Muscle Thickness During Speech Using Deep Learning and Ultrasound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03350/) (2026)
- [Dual Co-Train: Cross-Dataset Ultrasound Tongue Segmentation Under Extreme Data Scarcity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17983/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI) is a non-invasive and cost-effective tool for studying speech articulation, motor control, and related disorders. However, real-time tongue contour segmentation remains challenging due to low signal-to-noise ratios, imaging variability, and computational demands. We propose UltraUNet, a lightweight encoder-decoder architecture optimized for real-time segmentation of tongue contours in ultrasound images. UltraUNet incorporates domain-specific innovations such as lightweight Squeeze-and-Excitation blocks, Group Normalization for small-batch stability, and summation-based skip connections to reduce memory and computational overhead. It achieves 250 frames per second and integrates ultrasound-specific augmentations like denoising and blur simulation. Evaluations on 8 datasets demonstrate high accuracy and robustness, with single-dataset Dice = 0.855 and MSD = 0.993px, and cross-dataset Dice averaging 0.734 and 0.761. UltraUNet provides a fast, accurate solution for speech research, clinical diagnostics, and analysis of speech motor disorders.