System and method for secure processing of speech signals using pseudo-speech representations
AssigneeMicrosoft Technology Licensing, LLC
InventorsDushyant Sharma, William Francis Ganong, III, Daniel Paulino Almendro Barreda, Patrick Aubrey Naylor, Alvaro Martin Iturralde Zurita, Francesco Nespoli
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Abstract
A method, computer program product, and computing system for processing a speech signal. A sensitive portion of the speech signal is identified. A pseudo-speech representation of the sensitive portion is generated using a voice converter system. Speech processing is performed on the speech signal and the pseudo-speech representation of the sensitive portion using a speech processing system.
Claims18
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- receiving, by a speech privacy processor, a speech signal recorded during a medical encounter between a medical professional and a patient, wherein a sensitive portion of the speech signal includes Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of the patient;
- processing, by the speech privacy processor, the speech signal to obtain a synthetic speech signal at least by converting the PII within the sensitive portion of the speech signal into a pseudo-speech representation of the PII in the synthetic speech signal using a voice converter, wherein the voice converter reduces an acoustic quality of one or more linguistic units associated with the PII by filtering the sensitive portion of the speech signal in a modulation domain to remove modulations above a predefined threshold, thereby generating the pseudo-speech representation of the PII, wherein the modulation domain includes carrier signals and modulators;
- and
- transmitting, by the speech privacy processor, the synthetic speech signal to an automatic speech recognition (ASR) processor.
A computing system comprising:
- a processor;
- and
- a memory storing programming instructions for execution by the processor, the programming instructions, upon execution by the processor, causing the computing system to perform the following steps:
- receiving, by a speech privacy processor, a speech signal recorded during a medical encounter between a medical professional and a patient, wherein a sensitive portion of the speech signal includes Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of the patient;
- processing, by the speech privacy processor, the speech signal to obtain a synthetic speech signal at least by converting the PII within the sensitive portion of the speech signal into a pseudo-speech representation of the PII in the synthetic speech signal using a voice converter, wherein the voice converter reduces an acoustic quality of one or more linguistic units associated with the PII by filtering the sensitive portion of the speech signal in a modulation domain to remove modulations above a predefined threshold, thereby generating the pseudo-speech representation of the PII, wherein the modulation domain includes carrier signals and modulators;
- and
- transmitting, by the speech privacy processor, the synthetic speech signal to an automatic speech recognition (ASR) processor.
A computer program product residing on a non-transitory computer readable medium having programming instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a processor of a system, cause the system to perform the following operations:
- receiving, by a speech privacy processor, a speech signal recorded during a medical encounter between a medical professional and a patient, wherein a sensitive portion of the speech signal includes Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of the patient;
- processing, by the speech privacy processor, the to obtain a synthetic speech signal at least by converting the PII within the sensitive portion of the speech signal into a pseudo-speech representation of the PII in the synthetic speech signal using a voice converter, wherein the voice converter reduces an acoustic quality of one or more linguistic units associated with the PII by filtering the sensitive portion of the speech signal in a modulation domain to remove modulations above a predefined threshold, thereby generating the pseudo-speech representation of the PII, wherein the modulation domain includes carrier signals and modulators;
- and
- transmitting, by the speech privacy processor, the synthetic speech signal to an automatic speech recognition (ASR) processor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.