Ultrafit: A speaker-friendly headset for ultrasound recordings in speech science

UltraFit is a headset for Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) printed in Nylon; altogether, it weighs about 350 g. It was developed through an iterative process of rapid prototyping a proof of concept, asking for feedback from researchers and subjects of the experiments, and instantly incorporating changes based on their feedback into the design. We evaluated the UltraFit headset by recording a speaker using an optical marker tracking system that provides sub-millimeter tracking accuracy. We show that the overall error range of the headset movement for this speaker lies within 3mm with most errors lying in a 1-2mm range. This makes the headset potentially suitable for speech science applications. Furthermore, we analyze the superior usability of the headset compared to other existing designs and describe the headsets development process.