Rasool Al-Mafrachi

		M. Sc. Rasool Al-Mafrachi Room B-Audiolab Kaiserstraße 2, 24143 Kiel, Germany Phone: +49 431 880-6141 E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Research: In-Car-Communication

Within car-cabins there is a huge amount of background noise, which leads to a more difficult communication between several passengers. In-car-communication systems can help to enhance the communication and also to ensure a greater safety.

The idea is to use several microphones and speakers, which are distributed in the car-cabin to record the talking passengers voice and play it back over the loudspeakers located at the not talking passengers. In such systems feedback occures because the sound, which comes out of the speakers is again recorded by the microphones. This is why a feedback suppression gets necessary to ensure a system stability at sufficient amplification.

Further interests:

Electronics instrumentation
Database design
Networks

Short CV

Time span	Details
2017 - current	Research assistant at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany
2014 - 2016	Assist. lecturer at University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
2013 - 2014	MSc. in Computer and Network Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
2010 - 2013	Laboratory engineer at University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
2007 - 2010	BSc. in Computer Engineering at University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq

Publications

T. Hübschen, R. Al-Mafrachi, G. Schmidt: Impact of a Speaker Head Rotation on the Far-end Listening Situation, Proceedings of the 14th ITG Conference on Speech Communication, September 2021
Rasool Al-Mafrachi, Marco Gimm, Gerhard Schmidt: A Robust Acoustic Head Orientation Estimation and Speech Enhancement for In-Car Communication Systems, Proc. DAGA, Germany, 2019
R. Al-Mafrachi, M. Gimm, G. Schmidt: Estimation of the Head Orientation for In-Car Communication Systems, DAGA 2018

We are delighted to announce that Marten Finck has been awarded the GaS prize for his Master's thesis on "Evaluation of Speech Quality Using Machine Learning".

In his work, he investigated possible side effects of magnetic resonance-guided focussed ultrasound treatment (MRgFUS) on speech quality in patients with neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease and essential tremor. This innovative and non-invasive treatment method is used to reduce tremor, i.e. the shaking of limbs.

To evaluate the effects on speech, pre- and post-operative speech recordings of 56 patients were analysed: Speech quality was assessed in five categories (monotony, clarity, fluency, auditory effort and vocal tremor) through a survey with 21 participants and used to create a convolutional neural network (CNN). This generates an objective assessment of speech quality using mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), fundamental frequency and loudness. A mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.81 on a scale of 0 to 10 was achieved, compared to a standard deviation of 0.67 for the survey participants compared to a reference assessment. The evaluation of the survey revealed minor positive and negative changes in speech quality, which were balanced overall and tended to indicate natural speech variations in connection with the patients' underlying illnesses.

Congratulations on this well-deserved honour!

M. Sc. Rasool Al-Mafrachi

Research: In-Car-Communication

Further interests:

Short CV

Publications

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