Videofluoroscopic and Cine-MRI Examination of Tongue Movement during Partial Glossectomees' Speech

This study evaluated the effects of a partial glossectomy on: (1) tongue velocity, movement range, and height during speech and (2) vowel production. Videofluoroscopy and cine-MRI of single German words were used to study pre- and postoperative tongue movement in seven glossectomees. Postoperative principal component analyses demonstrated reduced complexity of lingual movement. For the videofluoroscopic data, four of the five patients exhibited reduced postoperative tongue velocity, while one patient exhibited a postoperative increase. Patients produced the words with a slower speech rate after the surgery. The mean differences between pre- and postoperative average tongue height and movement range were small and variable. The cine-MRI data did not indicate a change in postoperative tongue movement range and height. The acoustic results indicated that the vowel /u/ was produced with a more neutral tongue position, postoperatively. The present study demonstrated how tongue movement can be analyzed quantitatively based on videofluorospcopy and cine-MRI.MAS