# Talk:Electromagnetic articulography

I came across this in the DYK noms. I'm not completely stupid and have a EE degree (and have studied some neurophysiology) so thought I'd breeze through this. Please don't take these comments harshly but I'm having trouble with this article. 1) WP:OBVIOUS needs to be applied to the lede. Is there a sensor in the subject's mouth? Is there a wire coming out of his/her mouth? What does it look like? The model looks like an armillary sphere or something but I can't figure out what the relationship to a human is. 2) Section "Development": is Thomas Hixon the inventor? If he is, say so; if not, who is? Why did this wait until the 1970s to be developed, and not sooner? It appears to rely on 19th-century EM technology, or am I missing some subtlety? 3) Section headings are not great. "Description" ... maybe this should be "Principles of operation" or something? I mean, "description" really should apply to a whole encyclopedia article, shouldn't it? 4) Alternative methods seems skimpy. Why does anybody subject patients to radiation anymore? Is access to this equipment limited, vice ubiquitous fluoroscopy equipment? Are the results hard to interpret? Does the microbeam technique require clamping the subject's head and EMA does not? I think this is implied by "eliminating a heavy and restrictive headmount" but it needs to be explicit if so. Tell me more! — Brianhe (talk) 06:06, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

@Brianhe: Thanks so much for the advice! I tried to be as neutral as possible, but as a linguist I obviously am familiar with this from a linguistic perspective rather than a medical one, which is why it seems a little skewed. I also realize that as someone familiar with the machine, I probably skipped over some obvious parts, and I had a good amount of trouble writing the lead. I'll work on fixing that first. There's no published source that names Hixon as the inventor (that I have found so far) however he is the first person to ever publish about such a system. (I'll talk about why it took so long after I adress your other points). I'll rename that section. Are the others good? Section titles aren't my strong suit. I've searched for more info on alternative methods but haven't found too much. I'll try and fill those sections out a bit more though.
Part of why it took so long to develop is that to determine accurate placement in just a 2D plane requires tons of iterative computations multiple times per second, meaning that it wasn't really possible to develop until computers became more powerful and obtainable. But again, most of that is from my own synthesis of sources so can't be put in the article.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback! I'll have the lead fixed in an hour or so. Depending on how long it takes to find more sources on fluoroscopy and xray microbeam, I should have those filled out in about a day. Wugapodes (talk) 20:32, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
@Brianhe: I think I addressed your comments. How does it look? Wugapodes (talk) 23:14, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
It looks a lot better, especially the lede. I moved some text around, do you think it's better? Also put the image closer to where it's first described. I understand if there aren't more pictures of the apparatus, as nice as that would have been. — Brianhe (talk) 23:50, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, I think it looks good. Thanks for all the help! Wugapodes (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2015 (UTC)