Downloads

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA)

A research application for recording and analysing Ultrasound, EPG, EMA and other instrumental data.

All downloads are fully functional. If you have a USB licence key (also known as a "dongle") for the application then you can record and analyse your own data. Otherwise you are restricted to demonstration data.

How to use AAA

(Notes about the demo data included with AAA)

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v221.5.1

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.5.1 (25th September 2024, 365Mb)

Cite in APA style:

Wrench, A., Balch, P., Balch-Tomes, J. (2024) Articulate Assistant Advanced (version 221.5.1) [Computer software]. Articulate Instruments Ltd. https://www.articulateinstruments.com/downloads/

IMPORTANT: All versions of AAA since verson 221.0.0 (14th June 2023) support Unicode, which now allows you to use a much wider variety of languages in AAA, but this improvement makes new AAA databases incompatible with old versions of AAA (220.5.1 and earlier). If you use a Unicode version of AAA to open a database you created in an old version of AAA, it will update the database to use Unicode, but this will irreversibly change the database so you can no longer use it with AAA version 220.5.1 and earlier. Please back up old databases before opening them in AAA 221.0.0 or later!

New Features

  • Sync Pulse Duration Sensitivity is a new setting in the Sync Recording dialog. This lets you synchronize your ultrasound data even if your sync pulses are too short because you recorded without enough electrical power to your PStretch. This new control can be found in the ultrasonic Sync Recording dialog under the Advanced settings.
  • Blue questionmark buttons can now be found throughout AAA. If you click one, it will show you tutorials, videos and documentation about the thing you clicked on. At the time of this AAA release, we are still improving our help resources with new pages on a regular basis. Please email us if you clicked on a blue questionmark and couldn't find the help that you need!

Improvements to existing features

  • The AAA installer should now automatically install GPU support for Nvidia CUDA GPUs, which will allow your computer to use DeepLabCut much faster without any additional work if it has a Nvidia GPU in it. To get this benefit you must do the following steps:
    • Install/update to this version of AAA or newer.
    • Run AAA.
    • Open the DeepLabCut Options dialog. You can do this by right-clicking on the ultrasound display, clicking Ultrasonic Setup -> Display Options + Live Tracker..., then go to the Live Tongue Tracker tab and click DeepLabCut Live.
    • Tick the Advanced checkbox.
    • Click Reinstall DeepLabCut.
    • You can observe the progress of the installation by clicking on the Command Prompt window that will appear in your Windows Taskbar.
  • DeepLabCut splining within AAA now behaves much better if DLC goes wrong. Previously, AAA would freeze and crash if DeepLabCut crashed. Now, instead, AAA will simply inform you that DeepLabCut went wrong, and then let you get on with what you were doing. It should also detect some problems ahead of time to warn you upfront.
  • Export Files now automatically strips out characters that are illegal in Windows filepaths. If the resulting filepath would still be illegal (eg. "COM", which is a reserved word in Windows) then AAA appends an underscore to the end (so "COM" would become "COM_").
  • Export Files has always had the option to number export filenames with an incrementing number suffix. This has now been changed so it increments the suffix on a per-filestem basis rather than globally. Before this version of AAA it would go Alice1, Alice2, Bob3, Bob4. From this version of AAA onwards it now goes Alice1, Alice2, Bob1, Bob2.
  • Many improvements have been made to the experience of adding and editing Annotations:
    • Select a region in the audio timeline and press Ctrl-T to create an annotation there. The new annotation starts with its title text selected so you can just start typing immediately to replace the title with what you type.
    • Annotations can now be multi-selected in the annotations list.
    • Clicking on an annotation in the audio timeline selects just that annotation. Clicking and dragging in the audio timeline across multiple annotations selects all of them in the annotation list. Holding Shift key and clicking annotations in the audio timeline adds them to the current selection in the annotation list.
    • Selecting multiple annotations within the audio timeline and then holding the Ctrl key and click-dragging the edge of an annotation in the timeline re-sizes all selected annotations. You can use this to reverse the order of multiple annotations by selecting all of them and dragging one end of the selection past the other end.
    • Selecting multiple annotations within the audio timeline and then holding Ctrl and Shift and click-dragging the selection in the timeline will move all selected annotations.
    • You can now press the Delete key to delete all selected annotations.
    • AAA now adds all multi-selected annotations to the publisher when you choose to add an annotation to publisher.
    • Annotations shown on the audio timeline now visually update faster to reflect changes to the annotation title. Dragging annotations around in the timeline is also faster and more responsive.
  • Many improvements have been made to the experience of editing Prompt Lists:
    • You can once again copy-in prompt-lists from outside AAA just by copying them from outside AAA with Ctrl-C and pasting them into a prompt list with Ctrl-V.
    • You can now change the font of multiple prompts at once by selecting multiple prompts in a prompt list (eg. by clicking and dragging, or holding Ctrl and clicking multiple items), then right-clicking and changing the Font.
    • Moving items up/down the list with the Ctrl-U/Ctrl-D shortcuts now works correctly on multiselections of items to move the whole selection up/down the overall list.
    • You can now select multiple prompts in a list, then right-click and Duplicate to duplicate all selected items.
    • Some options in the right-click context menu have been renamed for clarity.
  • Improvements have been made to the experience of using the Spline Workspace and Publisher:
    • You can now multi-select splines in the Spline Workspace and copy them to the clipboard or send them to Publisher.
    • Ctrl-A now selects all splines in the list on the left, and you can use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste splines. The Delete key now deletes all selected splines.
  • Exporting ultrasound data as an .AVI file now always appends the filename with "_US" to distinguish them from video data which has been exported as .AVI. This prevents situations in which you export many .AVI files and then have no way to easily identify what data source they came from.
  • You can now choose to skip all blank annotations when importing annotations in either AAA format (.ann) or Praat format (.textgrid).
  • You can now cancel an in-progress batch syncronization of recordings.
  • The Negative Pulses checkbox in the ultrasonic Sync Recording dialog has been moved to the Advanced settings, which is accessible by ticking the Advanced checkbox.
  • AAA now warns you if you're about to start recording but you have almost no free space on your computer to store the new recording.
  • AAA now has access to twice as much of your computer's memory, which means AAA can use more of your computer's power to run faster under some circumstances. (AAA is a 32-bit application, and this change allows it to use 4GB of RAM instead of 2GB).
  • AAA now draws the audio waveform more efficiently, which means that extremely slow computers (and computers with lots of big programs running in the background) are less likely to experience stutters.

Fixes

  • The 2D spline difference between two means calculation in the Spline Workspace had an error. The standard deviation of the first mean was identical to the standard deviation of the second mean resulting in errorful p values. It has now been fixed so the standard deviations are correctly calculated.
  • Fixed a bug introduced in AAA version 221.3.10 in which the Re-sync continuous files button in the sync recording dialog was accidentally disabled. It is now usable again.
  • Batch synchronization of recordings no longer halts if it encounters a problematic file, instead it now informs you at the end.
  • Stopped the prompt display from switching to the wrong font size if your active Prompt List contained image prompts.
  • AAA no longer crashes if you try to load a recording that has absolutely no audio data in it. However, please note that an audio track is still essential for all AAA recordings, even if the audio track is silent. Without one you will not be able to analyze data.
  • Fixed a bug in which if you made a video recording, deleted it, then re-recorded it then it would show you the old deleted recording instead of the new one.
  • Importing a file that was saved with an ambiguous text encoding (eg. textgrids exported from Praat) could corrupt or delete certain diacritic latin characters. Now, if AAA cannot determine a file's encoding it will show you the text and ask you to double-click the one that looks correct.
  • You can no longer crash AAA by attempting to change task window while actively editing the current task window in design mode.
  • Importing a AAA annotation file (.ann) wouldn't show anything as having changed when it had actually imported successfully: this is now fixed.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur in the AAA installer in which it would try to check for the presence of a nonexistent SavedGames folder in older versions of Windows.
  • Fixed a bug in which the AAA installer failed to notice if you were trying to proceed with a new installation without the minimum requirements for a viable AAA installation.
  • Added missing video timeline to Analyze Ultrasonic + Video task window.
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur if you deleted an ultrasound recording while AAA was busy doing something else.
  • Fixed an error that could very occasionally appear during AAA startup.
  • Fixed a bug in File Export when exporting videos that could cause it to crash.

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v221.4.2

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.4.2 (22nd April 2024, 365Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • Importing a large number of textgrids now shows a progress-bar with time-estimate. You can close this progress-bar to cancel the import in progress.

Fixes

  • Fixed spline knot interpolation so that it correctly results in evenly-spaced knots along the spline's length. Prior to this fix, if you chose to re-interpolate the number of knots in a spline (eg. from 11 to 100 knots) it would result in the correct number of knots that lie exactly upon the original spline, but they would be irregularly distributed along the spline's length so that they were not equidistant. Now after this fix they are regularly spaced such that each knot is equidistant from its neighbours.
  • Fixed the Spline Workspace silently failing to re-interpolate the number of knots for fan-splines when requested to do so.
  • Fixed a bug in the Publisher feature of AAA which was causing text to be invisible. Also, you can now type and copy-paste unicode characters in when creating and editing text in Publisher.
  • Speculative fix to allow automated backup software (such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc.) to automatically sync AAA project folders. Prior to this, such backup software would interfere with files while AAA was using them, causing errors and crashes. You should now be able to use such backup software to sync your AAA project folders.
  • The Glossogram has been slightly tweaked in how it visually lays out the posterior-anterior axis on the graph (shown as the y-axis) to fix a slight bias which was making the anterior region of the tongue look slightly bigger than it actually is.
  • Fixed a bug which prevented recent versions of AAA from being installed on Windows XP. This version of AAA and onwards can once again be installed on Windows XP. If you require a recent version of AAA prior to this for a Windows XP computer, please contact us at Articulate Instruments and we can help.

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v221.4.1

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.4.1 (8th April 2024, 366Mb)

New Features

  • You can now convert prompts in older AAA projects with non-Latin script (that used special fonts or lookup-tables) into modern Unicode compatible with the latest AAA. A new dialog can now be found in the Prompt List Editor (right-click amongst your prompts/recordings and click Edit Prompt List...), then in the top-left of the Prompt List Editor, click List -> Convert old prompts to Unicode. You can use this new "Convert to Unicode" dialog to choose a text encoding (also known as "Windows Code Page") or select the font and script you used to determine the encoding automatically. You can also swap out all prompts in your project using a Lookup Table (accessible via tabs at the top) to load a .CSV file of the comma-separated form before,after that specifies what each prompt should be replaced with: each prompt in your project that matches a before will be replaced with the corresponding after.

Improvements to existing features

  • The Prompt List Editor (which you can access by right-clicking amongst your prompts/recordings and clicking Edit Prompt List...) has had its controls significantly improved. You can once again copy multiple rows of text from other programs and paste them into a Prompt List, and now it also supports unicode. You can multi-select, copy, paste and delete prompts with mouse and keyboard controls: multi-select prompts by clicking-and-dragging the mouse or by holding the Ctrl key and clicking individual prompts, then copy (Ctrl-C), cut (Ctrl-X), paste (Ctrl-V) or delete (Delete). You can also navigate and edit prompts with the arrow-keys and Enter.
  • In the Edit Splines dialog in the Keyframes tab: you can now hold the Ctrl key while using the Up and Down keys to skip the time regions between keyframes (denoted by "----"), and you can also press the Delete key to delete the currently highlighted keyframe.
  • Performance improvements in how AAA handles large amounts of text.

Fixes

  • Fixed export of some extended-ASCII characters (for example the Latin characters è, é, and ç) going wrong, which had been causing them to be replaced with nonsense. These characters now export correctly.
  • When importing TextGrids, AAA now ignores leading and trailing whitespace (such as spaces, tabs, and other non-printing characters) when finding which prompts should be matched with each TextGrid file. This change has been made to make the importing of TextGrids more robust, because some programs outside AAA add or remove whitespace before and after prompts, and this had been confusing AAA.

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v221.3.10

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.3.10 (19th March 2024, 366Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • The Sync Recording window (where you can synchronise the timing of audio, ultrasound, video, etc.) has been redesigned for ease-of-understanding, with clearer descriptions and a simpler layout. This window is also now shown automatically if you record new data and AAA is unable to find an appropriate synchronisation signal for it.
  • When importing Textgrids, AAA now recognizes and successfully imports Textgrid files which have been exported from PRAAT with the same name as an audio track file, meaning you should no longer need to manually rename Textgrids before importing them into AAA.
  • The Edit Splines dialog Template tab has a checkbox which controls whether applying the template will overwrite any existing splines of the same name. This checkbox has been removed, and instead the checkbox within the Batch tab called "Overwrite if already exists" controls this feature, so now all batch spline controls are in the same place.

Fixes

  • Fixed data export by every X milliseconds getting the start time wrong if exporting based on annotations.
  • Fixed a bug introduced in AAA version 221.3.7 in which during data export AAA would sometimes say "File does not exist" and refuse to export data.
  • Fixed a bug introduced in AAA version 221.0.0 which broke case-sensitivity so that AAA could not differentiate between uppercase and lowercase characters when filtering data. This is now fixed so you can once again use the case-sensitivity button to filter clients, recordings and annotations in a case-sensitive way if you want.
  • Fixed an error that could prevent AAA exporting data to files and folders whose names contain unicode characters.
  • Fixed exported videos being drawn one pixel too small.
  • Fixed a bug where the wrong number was used to offset data by a number of milliseconds during manual batch-synchronization of recordings.
  • Fixed rare crash caused by a progress-bar misbehaving.
  • When exporting files and copying recordings to new projects, the list of recordings will now correctly show unicode characters.
  • Previously, the Export Data dialog would behave as if you had exported successfully even if no data columns were specified and nothing was exported. Now, the "Execute" button is automatically disabled until you specify at least one recording/annotation and at least one data column.

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v221.3.7

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.3.7 (6th March 2024, 365Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • After exporting data, AAA once again offers a quick shortcut to edit and re-run the data export if you want (this feature was temporarily removed in AAA v221.3.6).

Fixes

  • Fixed an error that could occur when preparing a data export using an export preset from an older version of AAA, in which AAA would give an error saying that knot-interpolation was being performed on fan-splines.
  • Adding or removing monitors/screens from your computer while AAA is running no longer causes it to crash.
  • Switching to a task-window containing multiple windows then switching to another task window afterwards no longer causes the task window to load blank with nothing on it.
  • Data export no longer crashes if you try to overwrite a previously exported file while that file is in use by another program.
  • Improved the wording of some data export options.

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v221.3.6

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.3.6 (4th March 2024, 366Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • When exporting files, you can now specify if prompts that are distinguished only by upper/lowercase should be treated as different prompts.
  • The AAA installer now automatically identifies if your computer has Windows Core Isolation enabled, which blocks AAA USB Licence keys from working, and warns you.

Fixes

  • Fixed a serious problem introduced in AAA version 221.0.0 which caused data export to take many hours, during which time AAA appeared to be frozen. As of this fix, AAA once again finalises its data export in under a second. However, be aware that this fix now forces unicode in exported data to be in little-endian format.
  • Fixed a bug introduced in AAA version 221.0.0 in which previously if you started a Recording, AAA would show a green prompt and play an audio cue and then might be delayed for up to 1 second before it actually started recording. As of this fix, recording should once again start instantly after the prompt turns green and the audio cue is played.
  • Fixed an error where AAA would falsely claim that the file "condaEnv.yml" does not exist.
  • Fixed the annotation sub-window and the data export progress bar sometimes not displaying unicode characters correctly.

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v221.3.4

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.3.4 (23rd February 2024, 361Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • This version of AAA includes improved DeepLabCut models for both Tongue, Hyoid and Mandible, and also for front-viewed Lips. You can use these models in the same way as before, and they are now more accurate and robust to variation in human anatomy.
  • The AAA installer no longer needs administrator permissions for some features, so if your institution manages your computer then you should be able to update an existing installation of AAA or add an additional copy of AAA without needing to contact your IT services. First-time installations of AAA still need administrator permissions though.
  • When running the AAA installer, you now have a choice to force a full reinstall of DeepLabCut even if you already have a working version of it on your computer.

Fixes

  • Now gives a more descriptive error message if AAA cannot start because another process is locking its files.
  • Trying to install DeepLabCut without an internet connection no longer crashes under some circumstances.
  • Fixed an error that could sometimes occur when trying to close AAA while an ultrasound system was plugged-in.
  • Speculative fix to an issue in which DeepLabCut sometimes couldn't find the right version of Python contained within its Anaconda environment.
  • New installations of AAA now default to putting AAA in your My Documents folder. We recommend that you install AAA somewhere in your Users folder such as My Documents, your Desktop, or the .AppData folder. This is relevant to you if your computer is managed by your institution and as such you do not have administrator permissions: it will give you more control over AAA and fix some problems with exporting data.

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v221.3.0

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.3.0 (13th February 2024, 379Mb)

New Features

  • You can now export splines with a specific number of spline-knots. For example, you can export any spline with 100 knots now, regardless of how many knots it had before. This is useful if you want to use your splines in another bit of software outside AAA such as R or MatLab, and you need it to have a specific number of knots.
  • You can find this new functionality in the Spline Workspace and also in the Export windows in AAA, which you can access by clicking on the menu at the top left: File→Export. You can then change how many knots it will be exported with using the new tabs and buttons next to the export settings for splines.
  • You can also change how many knots a spline has within AAA by opening the Edit Splines dialog (by right-clicking on the ultrasound or video display), and clicking the new button in the Splines tab called "Change number of knots in spline".

Improvements to existing features

  • You can now import PRAAT Textgrids containing Unicode characters.
  • If you click and drag either end of a fiducial line in the ultrasound or video display while the Edit Splines dialog is open, it now shows a live display of the fiducial's length below the image which makes it easier to fit the fiducial to a bite plate or other known reference.
  • Progress bars have been added to some places in AAA to more clearly communicate when AAA is doing time-consuming work. Also slightly improved how progress bars estimate remaining time.
  • The Edit Splines dialog now more clearly communicates what's going to happen if you try to use DeepLabCut on only a subset of ultrasound frames, such as for example setting it to only spline every 4th ultrasound frame.

Fixes

  • Fixed a problem in which DeepLabCut would not install correctly when you installed AAA. If you have experienced this problem, you can retroactively fix DeepLabCut for your older versions of AAA by reinstalling DeepLabCut using this new version of AAA.
  • Fixed a problem that had prevented splines being drawn on exported videos. You can once again export videos with splines drawn on them if you want.
  • AAA no longer freezes if you cancel a DeepLabCut splining operation while it's in-progress.
  • Fixed a problem where using some of the Analysis Value Shape measures on a fan-spline would break if the tongue was pointing to the left in the ultrasound image.
  • Fixed errors in the Spline Workspace that can occur when calculating differences between mean splines. Also changed the output of mean spline differences so it's easier to read, and the alpha level of the significance test is shown in the output.
  • Fixed an error that occurred if you tried to right-click and edit the currently shown prompt, so you can once again edit the current prompt by right-clicking on the prompt display.
  • The Change Prompt dialog now works with Unicode.
  • Fixed multiple typos in the explanations of how the DEI, LOCa-i and Curve Position Shape Analysis Values work.

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v221.2.0

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.2.0 (8th September 2023, 379Mb)

New Features

  • The Spline workspace can now average 2D splines, such as those generated by DeepLabCut in AAA. These new averages show the distribution of knots (which for DeepLabCut are pose estimation keypoints). There is also a function to calculate differences between groups of 2D splines. This takes into account the movement of pose-estimation keypoints rather than just the shape in an arbitrary polar or euclidean space.
  • Publisher allows the new 2D mean and differences to be plotted in publishable quality.
  • You can now batch convert 2D splines (such as DeepLabCut splines) to fan splines. This conversion generates a new spline with postfix "_Fan", and preserves the original 2D splines. Batch conversion of fan splines to 2D splines is also possible.

Improvements to existing features

  • In the Spline Workspace, the way that fan-spline average difference is plotted has been made clearer.
  • This AAA version reinstates the ability to change a recording's prompt. You can do this by right-clicking on a prompt in the list of checkboxes and then selecting "Change prompt..."

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v221.0.4

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.0.4 (11th August 2023, 369Mb)

Fixes

  • Fixed very slow completion of export data.
  • Exporting unicode prompt lists as *.csv files now works.

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v221.0.2

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.0.2 (21st July 2023, 422Mb)

Fixes

  • Fixed bug that was failing to refresh annotation labels when typing into the label entry box.

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v221.0.1

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.0.1 (12th July 2023, 398Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • Now resumes live ultrasound display under all conditions after disconnecting and reconnecting the probe/scanner while AAA is running.

Fixes

  • Fixed bug in importing unicode prompts. Now imports Utf-8 correctly and displays the characters correctly during import.

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v221.0.0

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v221.0.0 (14th June 2023, 398Mb)

IMPORTANT: This version of AAA supports Unicode, which now allows you to use a much wider variety of languages in AAA, but this improvement makes new AAA databases incompatible with older versions of AAA. If you use this new version of AAA to open a database you created in AAA version 220.5.1 or earlier, it will update the database to use Unicode, but this will irreversibly change the database so you can no longer use it with AAA version 220.5.1 and earlier, so please back up old databases before updating AAA to get these new features!

New Features

  • This is a major release which introduces Unicode support for prompts and annotations. This allows any language orthography to be used as a prompt for participants to read. It also means that IPA or any other script can be used to label annotations. Important: If intending to export annotations from AAA and import into another application, consider whether that software can read unicode before labelling in AAA. Unicode characters requiring more than 2 bytes are not supported. This includes pictographic languages such as cuneiform and hieroglyphs; musical notation; and emojis.

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v220.5.1

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.5.1 (5th June 2023, 398Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • A new Analysis Values preset "DLC_5splines2.avl" has been added, which can be loaded into the Analysis Values editor to display and calculate distances from short tendon to 5 points along the tongue body.

Fixes

  • Fixed a bug that prevented the export of video if it was not de-interlaced.

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v220.5.0

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.5.0 (19 May 2023, 398Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • Exporting Spline X/Y points can now be set with an origin at either knot 0 or knot 1 of the reference fiducial. This means a fiducial can be placed to represent a bite plate and offset relative to the position of the upper incisors.
  • A new revision to the DeepLabCut Tongue model has been released. Anterior pose-estimation keypoints generated by this model have slightly improved correlation with EMA tongue sensors. Pearson correlation coefficients are as follows:
    • Tongue Tip x 0.51 y 0.81
    • Blade x 0.61 y 0.95
    • Dorsum x 0.65 y 0.94

Fixes

  • Fixed a bug that prevented Export setup files (*.xsu) from being imported
  • Fixed a bug that ignored the fiducial specified for offset and rotation of exported spline X/Y points
  • Fixed a bug that caused an error to appear after "master fiducial" had been selected in previous use of the application.

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v220.4.7

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.4.7 (10 May 2023, 389Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • Revised the DeepLabCut lip model for frontal camera view.

Fixes

  • Calculating angle, X and Y coordinates of a spline knot had previously been ignoring the orientation of the reference fiducial spline since version 220_X. This is now fixed so the Fiducial once again defines the origin and axes.

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v220.4.6

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.4.6 (22 April2023, 380Mb)

Fixes

  • Import ultrasuite now imports .ult, .wav, .avi,.textgrid, .spl if corresponding .txt file exists in the same folder. Note that you must select the parent folder of the folder(s) with the files to be imported.

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v220.4.5

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.4.5 (11 April2023, 380Mb)

Fixes

  • Fixed a bug where duplicate prompts would appear in the File → Export dialogue if the prompt appeared more than once in the Prompt List. This could cause the same file to be exported multiple times.
  • Fixed a bug which had been introduced in version 220.01: When recording ultrasound, the display would sometimes freeze and not show the ultrasound feed in real-time during recording.
  • In the Ultrasonic display dialogue the checkbox to "Draw Ultrasound Faster" now remembers its state when restarting AAA.

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v220.4.4

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.4.4 (29 March 2023, 275Mb)

New Features

  • During export, AAA now exports a file named [client][date].txt to the application folder with the date and start time (in milliseconds) of each recording as each new recording is completed.

Fixes

  • Fixed an "Invalid floating point operation" error which was sometimes generated when selecting a recording in the analysis values window.

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v220.4.2

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.4.2 (21 February 2023, 275Mb)

Improvements to existing features

  • The DeepLabCut MobileNet right facing model is now the default model in AAA. To use this and other unidirectional models, a checkbox has been added to the DeepLabCut Batch Splining dialog in AAA that will allow you to inform AAA what direction the tongue tip is pointing in your data. AAA will then ensure that the model works correctly on your data.
  • Analysis values for 2D spline distances and X or Y plots now have an option to calculate distance to any point along the tongue spline and not just the spline knots. In this version of AAA, a file called "DLC_5splines2.avl" is located in your AAA application folder which plots 5 equally spaced points along the tongue body . To use it, please use the menu bar at the top of AAA to choose "Edit Analysis Values", browse to the application folder, select this .avl file and then click import.

Fixes

  • Some analysis value calculations were unsafe, causing errors if key values like splines were not present. These have been corrected.

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v220.4.1

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.4.1 (02 November 2022, 275Mb)

New Features

  • AAA now automatically installs DeepLabCut.
  • Glossometer and Glossogram displays have been added, as has a new Task Window dedicated to Glossometric analysis.
  • Splines can now have a range of colours from one end to the other. This helps visualise which direction the spline is facing from the first to last knot.

Fixes

  • Fixed a bug introduced in the previous release which prevented recording unless ultrasound was plugged in.
  • Spline Workspace: Fixed a fatal crash which would occur if comparing too many splines at once using Mean Nearest-Neighbour Distance.

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v220.2

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v220.2 (12th July 2022, 275Mb)

New Features

  • DeepLabCut (DLC) feature extraction has been built into AAA. AAA will install and run DLC to provide tongue splines and position of jaw and hyoid. Trained DeepLabCut models are provided. This new functionality can also extract these features from live data as it comes in from the Micro or EchoB systems.

Improvements to existing features

  • Function keys added as alternatives to clicking the continuous record button to start and stop.
  • New "Precision" option added to find peak/valley function to make it less susceptible to spurious peaks due to rounding errors.
  • Export data allows annotated ultrasonic video segments to be exported.
  • Tongue shape display now allows a tongue spline with any name to be exported. Previously is would only plot a spline called "Tongue". This allows the new "DLC_Tongue" spline (generated by DLC) to be plotted.
  • Mean Sum of distances calculation is added to Spline workspace ans well as Analysis values. This allows the distance between one set of splines and another set of splines in the workspace to be calculated.
  • Option in ultrasound display dialogue to display preformed bitmap direct from the telemed firmware. A much more responsive live image is possible.
  • AAA will popup a message when a new revision is available.

Fixes

  • Can now import wav files, overwriting existing recordings. This is useful if you want to apply noise reduction, correct the audio or add a channel. However, caution is advised as corrupted audio can make a recording inaccessible.
  • A small bug has been fixed in Make Movie.
  • Max field of view for Micro MC4-2R20 probe has been corrected from 92 degrees to 102 degrees. Max field of view for Micro MC10-5R10 probe has been corrected from 156 degrees to 136 degrees.

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v219.8

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.8 (01 April 2022, 257Mb)

New Features

  • New options to set speckle reduction and focus depth have been added in the Micro recording setup. Important: this is preprocessing speckle reduction and cannot be undone after recording like other image processing options.

Improvements to existing features

  • A message now warns you if you have no prompts in Prompt List.

Fixes

  • Fixed batch splining so that it now only adds keyframes to annotated regions.
  • Batch splining has a new option to not process splines if they already exist.
  • The order of Splines is no longer changed after resplining.
  • Fan splining now works for recordings with high line densities.

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v219.07

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.7 (17 February 2022, 257Mb)

New Features

  • New video type of analysis value including pixel difference value.
  • EditSplines can now copy and paste 2D splines as well as Fan Splines. A copied spline can either be pasted as a keyframe elsewhere in the spline or create a new spline from it.

Improvements to existing features

  • Synchronisation of ultrasound and video can be done in a batch in a range of dates rather than on just one date.
  • When using File → Import → Ultrasuite to import .avi, .ult, .epg and .wav data, if the import matches an existing recording, it will now prompt, for each data type, whether to overwrite the current data of that type in the matching recording. This means that avi and wav data can be exported from AAA then processed with external software and re-imported back into AAA without affecting other data such as splines and annotations.
  • File | Import | ultrasuite now imports splines in *.spl format.

Fixes

  • In column listbox, the “duration” text updates depending on whether Recordings or Annotations is selected in the filter.
  • AAA no longer crashes if annotation values are selected in the column listbox when Recordings are selected in the filter.
  • Speculative fix to an occasional bug that shows the wrong spline shape when selecting a keyframe from the keyframes list.
  • Fixed a bug in the ctrl + click and drag of annotation boundaries and also in the shift + ctrl + click and drag of whole annotations.
  • Importing 3D EMA data into existing recordings now synchronises to the sync channel specified in Options → Settings → Carstens. The list of existing recordings and the list of pos files are now chronologically ordered for easy pairing of multi-selected files.

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v219.06

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.6 (14 December 2021, 246Mb)

New Features

  • New Analysis Value: Mean Standard Distance (MSD), an analysis value which requires 2 splines. This implementation of Mean Standard Distance compares the most distal points on the spline to the nearest point on the compared spline, such that increasing the length of one spline asymmetrically does not increase the resulting MSD value. If a spline has no points above the minimum confidence, any MSDs depending on it are given as zero.
  • New Analysis Value: Spline length. This gives the arc length of a spline from end-to-end, cubically interpolated between spline knots as visually shown. If a spline has no points above the minimum confidence, its length is given as zero.
  • Batch Editing Splines: You can now batch-edit all the splines in a project by right-clicking a video or ultrasound display and clicking "Edit Splines", then find this new feature under the "Batch" tab.
  • Export data by Spline Keyframes: You can now, for example, export analysis value data such that each row corresponds to a spline keyframe timepoint, or export a still image of the ultrasound at each spline keyframe.
  • Spline Import mirroring: You can now choose to import spline .csv data mirrored in the X-axis: there is now a checkbox visible when specifying the settings during import.

Improvements to existing features

  • Spline import: Added buttons to reset grid and quickly assign 'x','y','confidence' values. You can now clear selected cells with the delete or backspace keys. Added button to designate confidence value at import.
  • The Analysis Value "AB Knot Distance" can now measure the distance between any selected knots on any two splines, rather than requiring one of the splines to be a fiducial.
  • The Analysis Value "Area" no longer requires the specified fiducials M and N to intersect with anything.
  • Added raw ultrasonic parameter export compatibility with ultrasuite.
  • Ultrasound/Video export: You can now manually choose whether your exported files should begin from the start of the audio or the start of the video, if they are different.
  • New default Task Windows added: "2-Screen Ultrasound and Video" and "Separate Windows for All".

Data Import Bug Fixes

  • Change: For compatibility and stability, importing any spline containing more than 50 knots will be automatically subsampled in AAA to within 50 knots by removing every nth knot.
  • Fixed crash that could occur if importing a spline from a corrupted data file.
  • Fixed splines being imported time-misaligned if the ultrasound or video begins before the audio.
  • Fixed splines sometimes importing misaligned to the destination ultrasound/video. The "Make Movie" function (accessible by right-clicking on an ultrasound or video display) now automatically centres videos in both axes.
  • Fixed the importing of splines becoming time-misaligned if the imported file has a nonconsecutive data format.
  • Spline import now only creates keyframes to exactly match input data, and an issue has been fixed where importing a spline could sometimes create empty keyframes.
  • Spline import: Fixed batch video importing. Sped up batch importing.
  • Spline import: Fixed importing of DeepLabCut output data.

Data Export Bug Fixes

  • Changed video export to improve compatibility with some 3rd-party software. Fixed bug where spline ultrasound import could go to video, and vice-versa.
  • Fixed "Make Movie" not respecting your selection of framerate: you should now be able to export files in 25Hz again.
  • Fixed "Make Movie" sometimes incorrectly loading recordings.
  • Fixed a crash that could happen if you tried to export files twice in quick succession.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur if you tried to export a filename as its prompt with a really long prompt.
  • Fixed a problem preventing export of Annotation regions as movies, eg. export each Annotation region of a recording as an individual video file.
  • Fixed crash on trying to export annotation-dependent data without selecting annotations.
  • Fixed the export of multiple images from a single Annotation region or recording. Fixed a small bug where the wrong checkbox determined if you added splines to an exported video or ultrasound recording.

Other Bug Fixes

  • Adding and deleting keyframes now processes a lot faster.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause old projects to remain at large file size on your hard-drive even after you deleted data inside them.
  • Fixed a bug where copying prompt-groups could accidentally inflate the file-size of the project on your hard-drive.
  • Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur when calculating Analysis Values.
  • Fixed a problem where adding a spline from a user-made template could unintentionally overwrite other splines in a recording.
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur when calculating certain spline analysis values.
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur when recording or loading audio.
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur when removing data from a project.
  • Fixed spline lists and drop-down selections of splines not showing all the right splines.

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v219.05

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.5 (20 August 2021, 246Mb)

Changes

  • Improved - Speed of loading large projects, opening edit splines dialogue and changing task windows .
  • Improved - Ultrasound image quality.
  • New - Image bilateral filter for smoothing speckle. This only affects appearance and not the underlying raw data.
  • Fixed - Occasional divide-by-zero crash when running edge detection.

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v219.04

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.04 (13 April 2021, 246Mb)

Changes

  • Fixed - bug that caused crash when deleting client.
  • Fixed - unwanted refresh of analysis values when simply moving cursor.
  • Added - New maths values templates for 2D tangential velocity and 1D smoothing and velocity.
  • Fixed - bug where maths value were not updated unless editor exited then entered again and recalculated.
  • Fixed - bug that caused MFCC spectrogram to crash the application.
  • Improved - Hyoid/mandible tracking sped up significantly.
  • New - Spline importing in csv format (as produced by DeepLabCut).
  • New - Spline export and import in *.spl format added for the purpose of sharing work by several investigators on a single database. If one person adds splines, these can be added to other people's copy of the same database.
  • Improved - Multiselect checkboxes now show when users may want to select many files or analysis values for processing.
  • New - Art ultrasound system interface included ( some echoB & Micro & Art setup parameters added).Options for higher line density provided but not recommended as it reduces frame rate with no image processing benefit.
  • New - when creating a new fiducial or 2D spline the scale is now set to the mm/pixel scale for the ultrasonic data.
  • Upgrade to this revision to fix the above mentioned bugs.

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v219.03

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.03 (11 December 2020, 246Mb)

Changes

  • Bug copying GGSplines from one project to another fixed.
  • When exporting textgrids it is now possible to export only the filtered annotations rather than all annotations. A new option to not export unlabelled regions as blank segment tiers in the textgrid file makes it easier to export selected labels from one AAA project and copy them into another AAA project. This should be used in preference to the export/import annotations option which is now largely obsolete.
  • Publisher now remembers the size of the dialogue in the *.pub file, making it possible to recreate the same size bitmap for several plots. Also when resizing the dialogue manually the numerical size of the bitmap is displayed while the size changes making it possible to set it to a specific size.
  • AAA now calculates mel scaled cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). These can be plotted and exported using data export. It also calculates the root mean square (rms) difference of a range of MFCC coefficients over a time period of 512 audio samples.

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v219.02

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.02 (18 November 2020, 246Mb)

Changes

  • Batch synchronisation of video and batch synchronisation of ultrasonic data failed under 219.01. This is fixed.
  • The Export File dialogue was too big to view on a display with a moderate or low screen resolution. This dialogue has been paginated to reduce its size.

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v219.01

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v219.01 (23 August 2020, 246Mb)

Changes

  • Publisher dialogue - resizing made faster and easier using grab frame.
  • Major reorganisation of Edit Splines dialogue. Now includes hyoid and mandible tracking and an option to automatically set the confidence levels to zero beyond the hyoid and mandible shadows. The Roof spline can now be manually adjusted even if the keyframe is not selected.
  • New analysis values have been added. A set of spline "shape" measures (DEI, TCPI, LOCa-i, TF1, TF2,TF3: published by N. Zharkova et al; Curve degree, curve position: published by Menard et al; number of inflections NINFL: published by Preston et al) These values can be plotted and exported. Also a new set of measures based on raw ultrasonic data. a) probe direction measure where positive values indicate tongue tip pointing to right. A pixel difference measure which can be used to identify time points where structures within the image change.
  • Installer for new Windows 10 driver. (Will avoid errors when acquiring video using dfg2USB video capture card). IMPORTANT
  • New video tutorials can be found here covering these new features.

Very old versions of AAA are below

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v218.04

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v218.04 (20 December 2019, 246Mb)

v218.03

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v218.03 (30 May 2019, 246Mb)

v217.10

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v217.10 (29 November 2018, 192Mb)

v217.09

Download Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) v217.09 (16 November 2018, 192Mb)

v217.08

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) (download version 217.08) 192Mb [Released 29 October 2018]

v217.06

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) (download version 217.06) 192Mb [Released 30 May2018]

v217.05

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) (download version 217.05) 192Mb [Released 05 April 2018]

v217.04

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) (download version 217.04) 192Mb [Released 19 January 2018]

v217.03

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) (download version 217.03) 192Mb [Released 11 August 2017]

v216.16

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) (download version 216) 109Mb

(This is the oldest version that can still record EchoB data! Older versions than this are incompatible with EchoB!)

NOTE: Once a project has been opened and changed in this version it may not be viewable in older versions.

v215

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) (download version 215) 31.2Mb

To see a description of all changes in these older versions of AAA, please click here.

Ultrasound application for Recording, Client assessment and Visual feedback

SonoSpeech (download V220.04.2) 613Mb [released 21 Feb 2023]
Bug Fix: A backward incompatible change to the python Numpy library prevented Deeplabcut from functioning. This installer forces the installation of the previous version of numpy so that Deeplabcut functions properly.

SonoSpeech (download V220.04.1) 613Mb [released 11 Nov 2022]
New features: Live tongue contour drawing button via Deeplabcut (Internet access require while installing). Smoother, faster live ultrasound of similar quality to Echowave II. Button Icons changed to be more identifyable. Most reward gifs have been removed as they may have breached copyright. Users can download their own gifs (transparent backgrund works best) and add them to the C:\SonoSpeech\GIFS folder.

Manual for SonoSpeech V220.04 (pdf)

SonoSpeech (download V218.04) 500Mb [released 09 Sept 2019]
New features: The Exemplar window has been changed. It now consists of a single window from which typical speech videos can be loaded OR exemplar frames saved by the clinician and representing the current client's best attempts. There is a new copy/save button to allow such exemplar snapshots to be taken from live or recorded ultrasound. A bug in the reward function has been fixed. The automatic palate tracing buttons have been enlarged.

Manual for SonoSpeech V218.04 (pdf)

SonoSpeech (download V218.02) 480Mb [released 06 May 2019]
New features: Automatic palate tracing option for overlay. May be useful. Please let us know whether it works for you.

SonoSpeech (download V218.01) 470Mb [released 09 March 2019]

New features: Improved synchronisation (after setting an offset for the PC you are using); Hints for buttons

SonoSpeech (download V217.10) 860Mb [released 17 December 2018]

Bug fixes

SonoSpeech (download V217.08) 860Mb [released 29 October 2018]

New Prompt lists included for a range of target segment assessments and treatment. New example videos for a range of target segments.

Note: In demo mode, the software will show all the functions but live data from Micro or EchoB systems cannot be viewed or recorded. To register the software a license must be purchased from Articulate Instruments.

Check your version (visible on startup) and if it is older than the version above you can download and upgrade for free.

SonoSpeech (download V217.04) 600Mb

Articulate Assistant is an EPG application for Recording, Client assessment, Analysis and Visual feedback

AA-sq-btnArticulate Assistant (download V120) 5Mb
Released 03.07.2018

New: Sync option added to specify the audio channel with sync signal. New: EPG frame rate can be adjusted in steps of 100,000th of a second. Set to 0 for 100Hz or set to 100,000 for 200Hz. Can be adjusted to compensate for soundcard inaccuracy if not recording at nominal rate.

AA-sq-btnArticulate Assistant  (download V118) 7.3Mb
Note: Fully functional. If you have a usb license key (dongle) for the application then you can record and review your own data. Otherwise you are restricted to demonstration data.   This is the software application that is provided with WinEPG. Check your version (using the Help| About menu in your copy of Articulate Assistant) and if it is older than the version above you can download and upgrade for free. Articulate assistant can also be used on it's own to analyse EPG data.          
Tutorial videos are gradually being recorded and made available at this YouTube channel.

Articulate Instruments YouTube channel

Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) Tutorials

Tutorial 1: Installing AAA
How to install AAA.

Tutorial 2: User interface basics
Interface basics including how to inspect and review data.

Tutorial 3: Annotations and splines
How to label your data and fit splines to ultrasonic data.

Tutorial 4: Exporting data
How to export data from AAA for analysis in other programs such as PRAAT or a statistical package like R.

Tutorial 5: The spline workspace
How to compare tongue curves from different segments or recordings.

Tutorial 6: Publisher and Analysis values dialogue
Create high quality graphics for journal publication including spectrograms, waveforms, and charts of analysis values.

Tutorial 7: Recording and visual feedback with ultrasonix or EchoB
Shows recording of ultrasound data from Ultrasonix system.

Tutorial 8: EPG and formant analysis values and publisher
Create new analysis values based on formants or EPG and then export them into publisher to create high quality figures.

Tutorial 9: Batch Processing splines
A batch function that allows every frame of every recording or annotated region to be splined with one click (overnight).

Tutorial 10: Design mode
Customise the task windows to your needs. Add or remove unwanted windows, resize windows or change the default task window on startup.

MOCHA TIMIT tools

EmaTools2 is a set of free Matlab  macros authored by Noel Nguyen and Alan Wrench for viewing the MOCHA Timit multichannel articulatory data.                
ICPhS 2015 :Towards a 3D tongue model for parameterising ultrasound data (ppt)(pdf)

SMC 2017: A massless 3D tongue model and its relation to the lambda model (ppt)(pdf)

Sensors, 2022 Beyond the Edge: Markerless Pose Estimation of Speech Articulators from Ultrasound and Camera Images Using DeepLabCut

Ultrafest 2022 Glossometrics and the Glossogram.

Ultrafest 2024 Improving ultrasound pose estimation accuracy by training on co-registered EMA data.

Working paper 2024 Savitsky-Golay smoothing algorithm

We cannot vouch for these tools.

    R Utilities

R https://cran.r-project.org/
Rstudio https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download2/

Rticulate: Ultrasound Tongue Imaging in R (Stefano Coretta Manchester)(2016)
https://github.com/stefanocoretta/rticulate
This package provides two functions for importing UTI data from Articulate Assistant Advanced and plotting UTI data from any source.

ultRa (Richard Beare LaTrobe Australia) (2016)
An R package containing functions to manipulate speech ultrasound data obtained with Articulatory Instruments AAA software.
https://github.com/richardbeare/ultRa

SSANOVA with R tutorials (2016)
http://corpling.uis.georgetown.edu/shuoz/ssanova/index.php
Smoothing splines for measuring difference between two sets of splines. Paper by Lisa Davidson (2006) on this website .

North Carolina State University Phonology Lab (Jeff Mielke)
https://phon.wordpress.ncsu.edu/lab-manual/ultrasound-and-video/working-with-data/
tongue_ssanova.r amongst other scripts described in detail on this page. Includes polar version of SSANOVA more suited to tongue contour data.  

    PYTHON scripts

Tongue shape analysis metrics (Kathryn Dawson)
https://github.com/kdawson2/tshape_analysis
This script contains code for several shape analysis metrics designed to be used on contours taken from ultrasound images of the tongue. The analysis metrics are:

  • Procrustes analysis
  • Modified Curvature Index
  • Fourier analysis of the tongue profile

UltraSuite Data and Tools (ULTRAX project)
http://www.ultrax-speech.org/ultrasuite
This is a repository for ultrasound child speech data stored in a similar format to that which can be exported from AAA. It includes python scripts for reading and displaying data held in this format.

UltraTrace ultrasound annotation tool (Jonathan Washington)
https://github.com/SwatPhonLab/UltraTrace
GUI for creating textgrid output based on *.wav or *.flac files and ultrasound tongue imaging data in DICOM or AAA *.ult format.

    MATLAB

Ultramat (Thomas Hueber)
http://ultraspeech.com/web/index.php?page=ultramat
Implements the EigenTongue approach which is a statistical technique consisting in encoding an ultrasound frame by its projections onto a set of standard (tongue) configurations.

See also North Carolina State University Phonology Laboratory for MATLAB code (link in R section above)

GetContours developed by Mark Tiede at Haskins can be downloaded here.
https://github.com/mktiede/GetContours

SLURP (Cathy Laporte at Montreal) This tracker built on top of the GetContours MATLAB GUI uses particle filtering to track the tongue contour using a hand "seeded" frame.
https://github.com/cathylaporte/SLURP              

Help sheets

Information for making plaster impressions (pdf) Going to the dentist (doc) Taking care of your EPG Palate (doc) & Palate wearing record form (doc)  

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