SIPMI: Superimposing palatal profile from maxillary impression onto midsagittal articulographic data

Palatal traces reconstructed by current advanced technologies of real-time mid-sagittal articulatory tracking (e.g., EMA, ultrasound, rtMRI, etc.) are mostly in low-resolution and lack concrete anatomical/orthodontic reference points as firm articulatory landmarks for determining places of articulation. The present study proposes a method of superimposing a physical palatal profile extracted from maxillary impression, onto mid-sagittal articulatory data. The whole palatal/dental profile is first obtained from performing an alginate maxillary impression, and a plaster maxillary mold is made from the impression. Then, the mold is either (1) cut into halves for hand-tracing or (2) 3D-scanned to extract a high resolution mid-sagittal palatal line. The mid-sagittal palatal line made from maxillary mold is further sub-divided into articulatory zones, following definitions of articulatory landmarks in the literature (e.g., Catford 1988), by referring to anatomical/orthodontic landmarks imprinted on the mold. Las...