Patent Document ID: 8316004
Application ID: 12910148

Base Claim:
1. A speech retrieval apparatus for searching, in an audio file database, for one or more target audio files by using one or more input search terms, comprising: a related document obtaining unit, including a processor, configured to search, in a related document database where documents related to audio files in the audio file database are stored, for one or more related documents by using the one or more input search terms; a correspondence audio file obtaining unit configured to search, in the audio file database, for one or more correspondence audio files corresponding to the one or more related documents obtained; and a speech-to-speech search unit configured to search, in the audio file database, for the one or more target audio files by using the one or more correspondence audio files obtained, wherein the speech-to-speech search unit includes: a speech segment division unit configured to obtain a speech segment collection by dividing each of the obtained correspondence audio files into speech segments, a noise cancellation unit configured to cancel noise by canceling one or more speech segments which are not related to the search terms, in the speech segment collection by using the search terms, and a segment-to-speech search unit configured to search, in the audio file database, for the target audio files by using the noise-cancelled speech segment collection.

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Claim 3:
3. The speech retrieval apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein: the search terms are one or more keywords, one or more sentences, or one or more documents.