A Text-to-Speech Converter for Radiology Journal Articles

Radiology articles are primarily designed to be read on paper or a screen. Audio versions let users hear this material during activities when reading is not practical. Currently, there are relatively few radiology materials in audio format. However, inexpensive text-to-speech software can easily produce spoken-word versions of digital text. This paper describes a free Web-based program that converts radiology articles to audio format using text-to-speech software.

Reading journal articles remains one of the main ways many of us keep up with the latest literature, but it can be difficult to find dedicated time for this. Portable audio players such as the iPod offer one solution. These players make it easy to download and listen to audio files for “interstitial listening” during activities that preclude reading, such as driving, exercising, or performing repetitive chores.

Currently, there are relatively few radiology educational materials available online in audio format. The editor of Radiology has a monthly podcast ( http://radiology.rsna.org/site/podcasts/archive.xhtml ), and faculty members from the Medical University of South Carolina ( http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/musc-radiology-podcast/id253693973 ), the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine ( http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ctisus-computed-tomography/id75022309 ), the Massachusetts General Hospital ( http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mgh-radiology-rounds/id216892347 ), the University of Washington ( http://uwmsk.org/podcasts/Site/Podcasts/Archive.html ), and Seattle Children’s Hospital ( http://web.mac.com/mthapa/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html ) have posted radiology podcasts online. CMEonly.com , a commercial vendor, offers audio reviews of the radiology literature for $349 for 12 issues. Fortunately, the text of many radiology journals is widely available online in digital form, creating a large pool of potential material for an “interstitial listener.”

Text-to-speech (TTS) software has been widely available for several years and is currently built into many modern operating systems, such as Apple’s OS X. Such system software makes it easy to read aloud occasional selections but is tedious to use with large quantities of text. Independently developed software, such as TextCast ( http://www.bitmaki.com/textcast/ ) for the Macintosh, allow easy and efficient wholesale conversion of Web pages into audible podcasts.

Alas, most published Web pages are not optimized for reading aloud. For example, it is quite tedious to listen to a computer reading visual typographic devices, such as tables of content, headers, and footers. In addition, it is a bit jarring to hear TTS software pronouncing “CT,” “MR,” and “MD” as “Connecticut,” “mister,” and “Maryland.” Thus, some form of text filtering is desirable before TTS conversion.

Free text-filtering software is currently available for many Web ( http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ ) and YouTube pages ( http://quietube.com ). Unfortunately, these two programs may not work very well for journals with special formatting, such as some radiology journals.

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Open full size image

Figure 1

Initial page for text-to-speech converter.

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Open full size image

Figure 2

Flowchart of text-to-speech program. HTML, hypertext markup language.

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Appendix A

Hypertext Markup Language Code for Initial Web Page

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Appendix B

Ruby Code for .cgi Program

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Appendix C

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

References

1. Sanal H.T., Chen L., Negrao P., et. al.: Distal attachment of the brachialis muscle: anatomic and MRI study in cadavers. AJR Am J Roentgenol 2009; 192: pp. 468-472.
2. Uslan M.M., Eghtesadi K., Burton D.: Accessibility of blood glucose monitoring systems for blind and visually impaired people. Diabetes Technol Ther 2003; 5: pp. 439-448.
3. Bierner G.: TraumaTalk: content-to-speech generation for decision support at point of care. Proc AMIA Symp 1998; pp. 698-702.

A Text-to-Speech Converter for Radiology Journal Articles

Appendix A

Hypertext Markup Language Code for Initial Web Page

Appendix B

Ruby Code for .cgi Program

Appendix C

References

Further Reading

A New Computerized Measurement Approach of Carotid Artery Stenosis on Tomographic Image Sequence

An Interactive Web-Based Tool for Detecting Verification (Work-up) Bias in Studies of the Efficacy of Diagnostic Imaging

Creating and Enhancing Radiology Student Interest Groups