Think beyond organ donation and get ready to donate your voice to someone who is unable to speak.
Professor Rupal Patel from the Northwestern University and Tim Bunnel from the Nemours Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children have created a new technology called VocaliD that can build synthetic voices using whatever vocal sounds a patient can produce.
These are then put together with a voice from a donor who matches the patient's age, gender and size, media reports said.
It aims to help children and adults with severe speech impairment find a voice of their own.
The end result is a synthetic voice that suits the patient and has a powerful positive impact on their ability to express themselves.
Each synthetic voice is as unique as a fingerprint.
"To donate your voice, donors would have to record between two-three hours of speech, or rather several thousand sample sentences, which have been sourced from classic books like "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", "The Velveteen Rabbit" and "White Fang", Patel was quoted as saying.
According to Patel, the idea is for the donor to cover all the different combinations of sounds that occur in language.
"The more speech you have, the better the voice," she added.
