Nonintrusive objective measurement of speech intelligibility: A review of methodology
Yong Feng, Fei Chen
Abstract
Speech intelligibility (SI) measurement has attracted great attention in the speech communication community over the last decade. It is a critical consideration for speech enhancement, coding, and transmission, as well as for diagnostics. In particular, nonintrusive SI measures that are realistically applicable without reference speech signals have been growing rapidly. This paper gives a review of methodology of nonintrusive SI measures and aims to show how nonintrusive SI metrics perform relative to intrusive ones, as well as their potential in future speech communication applications. In addition, this paper provides a systematic classification of historical and recently introduced methods in a comprehensive framework with critical comments and comparisons of their advantages and limitations. It considers an extensive and up-to-date bibliography to provide a suitable background and overview of recent advancements. The current SI metric development status is presented in the context of an organized framework with associated analyses and examples of the utility of SI metrics in physiological research and clinical applications. Finally, this paper discusses important emergent and potential future research directions.