Source: www.wwmt.com
Author: staff

For Steve and Annet Shannon it’s a chance to maintain normalcy, and regain a voice that could be lost. Five years ago Annet Shannon was diagnosed with a rare form of tongue cancer, and doctors removed 30% of the back of her tongue followed by a series of radiation treatments, which Steve Shannon says were working, “Everything was going well with no evidence of recurrence until this last December where she found a lump on her neck. To make a long story short she will be having surgery May 4, 2010. There is a possibility she could be losing her tongue and voice box and her ability to speak.”

For the Shannons it’s a grim reality that Annet’s surgery could take her voice, but the couple had at least heard of famed film critic Roger Ebert, who lost his jaw to cancer surgery, but was given a new custom text to voice device where he was able to communicate using his own voice.

To Steve Shannon, that seemed like just the thing for them, “My wife was very interested in this technology and she was searching to learn more. By fate we met Professor John Eulenberg, director of MSU’s Artificial Language Lab. The Artificial Language Lab has begun a project as one of five sites to help people to create their own personal text-to-speech software systems.”

The Shannons learned that the underlying technology was created by Tim Bunnell and his team at the University of Delaware in Wilmington, associated with A.I DuPont Children’s Hospital and the Nemours Research Foundation. And after learning more Annet decided to be one of the first test subject’s to record and bank her voice. For the woman who never saw cancer coming, Annet Shannon says it was a technology that could literally save her voice, “I’ve never been a smoker never ever had any association with it, it’s just one of those things.”

Michigan State University Professor John Eulenberg heads up the Artificial Language Lab at MSU, and he recently visited the Shannons to start the work of recording her voice and recreating the exact tone, an artificial voice yes, but onw that Annet says will be all hers, “Just the fact that it’s going to be personalized and that it’s going to be my own speaking voice meant a lot to me.”

“We find pathways both for them to be able to have a voice, through a voice synthesizer, ” says Eulenberg, who calls the technology ‘Text to speech’ and if a person can type, that’s turned into speech in that person’s voice. It’s something that Eulenberg researches but also has a personal connection to since his father lost his voice to ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, “That was a very powerful influence in my life to have me apply what i learned as a comp scientist and linguist.”

Eulenberg admits a robotic voice works, but it’s impersonal, “When i think of my mother, who passed away from cancer the first thing I remember is her voice, if someone calls up on the telephone I’ll identify them from their voice.” And even though the voice recreating technology could help thousands Eulenberg admits it’s not really well known, even among doctors and linguists. But he adds that it’s surprisingly convenient, in less than a week Annet Shannon’s recordings will be processed into her own voice, that could literally say anything, “I’m hoping she’ll actually have that voice and be able to experience it before even her operation.”

Annet Shannon may lose her voice, but she’s doing this partially to bring light to the process that may save her voice and many others in the future, “I am so thankful I can’t really say how important it is for me to be able to still be able to communicate.”