Audio Signal De-Identification

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed for automatically de-identifying spoken audio signals. In particular, techniques are disclosed for automatically removing personally identifying information from spoken audio signals and replacing such information with non-personally identifying information. De-identification of a spoken audio signal may be performed by automatically generating a report based on the spoken audio signal. The report may include concept content (e.g., text) corresponding to one or more concepts represented by the spoken audio signal. The report may also include timestamps indicating temporal positions of speech in the spoken audio signal that corresponds to the concept content. Concept content that represents personally identifying information is identified. Audio corresponding to the personally identifying concept content is removed from the spoken audio signal. The removed audio may be replaced with non-personally identifying audio.

1 . A method comprising steps of:
 (A) identifying a first portion of an original audio signal, the first portion representing personally identifying content, by performing steps of:
 (A)(1) generating a report, the report comprising: (a) content representing information in the original audio signal, and (b) at least one timestamp indicating at least one temporal position of at least one portion of the original audio signal corresponding to the content; 
 (A)(2) identifying a first personally identifying concept in the report; 
 (A)(3) identifying a first timestamp in the report corresponding to the first personally identifying concept; 
 (A)(4) identifying a portion of the original audio signal corresponding to the first personally identifying concept by using the first timestamp; and 
   (B) removing the identified first portion from the original audio signal to produce a modified audio signal, which does not include the identified first portion.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising a step of:
 (C) transcribing the de-identified audio signal to produce a transcript of the de-identified audio signal.   
     
     
         3 . A system comprising:
 identification means comprising means for identifying a first portion of an original audio signal, the first portion representing personally identifying content, the identification means comprising:
 means for generating a report, the report comprising: (a) content representing information in the original audio signal, and (b) at least one timestamp indicating at least one temporal position of at least one portion of the original audio signal corresponding to the content; 
 means for identifying a first personally identifying concept in the report; 
 means for identifying a first timestamp in the report corresponding to the first personally identifying concept; 
 means for identifying a portion of the original audio signal corresponding to the first personally identifying concept by using the first timestamp; and 
 means for removing the identified first portion from the original audio signal to produce a modified audio signal, which does not include the identified first portion. 
   
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 3 , further comprising:
 means for transcribing the modified audio signal to produce a transcript of the modified audio signal.