Graphene-based wearable intelligent throat enables stroke patients to speak

An international team of researchers – including members from the University of Cambridge, Beihang University, Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, Tsinghua University, and other institutions – has developed a wearable, comfortable and washable device called Revoice that could help people regain the ability to communicate naturally and fluently following a stroke, without the need for invasive brain implants.

Wearable silent speech systems hold significant potential for restoring communication in patients with speech impairments, but seamless, coherent speech has so far remained elusive and clinical effectiveness unproven. The Revoice system (also referred to as an intelligent throat, IT) integrates throat muscle vibration sensing and carotid pulse monitoring with large language model (LLM) processing to support fluent, emotionally expressive communication in real time. Ultrasensitive textile strain sensors embedded in a soft choker capture high-quality signals from the neck area and feed them into a token-level decoding pipeline, enabling continuous, delay-free speech reconstruction. In tests with five stroke patients with dysarthria, the system achieved low word and sentence error rates and a marked increase in user satisfaction, suggesting a promising non-invasive route to restore more natural communication.

Schematic of a textile-based strain-sensing choker. Two channels are aligned with the carotid artery and center of throat, respectively. Each channel consists of a two-terminal crack-based resistive strain sensor surrounded by a polyurethane acrylate (PUA) stress isolation layer. The top right SEM image shows the spontaneous ordered crack structure of the graphene coating. Image from: Nature CommunicationsWearable silent speech systems hold significant potential for restoring communication in patients with speech impairments, but seamless, coherent speech has so far remained elusive and clinical effectiveness unproven. The Revoice system (also referred to as an intelligent throat, IT) integrates throat muscle vibration sensing and carotid pulse monitoring with large language model (LLM) processing to support fluent, emotionally expressive communication in real time. Ultrasensitive textile strain sensors embedded in a soft choker capture high-quality signals from the neck area and feed them into a token-level decoding pipeline, enabling continuous, delay-free speech reconstruction. In tests with five stroke patients with dysarthria, the system achieved low word and sentence error rates and a marked increase in user satisfaction, suggesting a promising non-invasive route to restore more natural communication.

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