[AUDITORY] 4th COG-MHEAR Audio-Visual Speech Enhancement Challenge (AVSEC-4)

Dear all (with apologies for any cross-postings),

We are running a fourth edition of the COG-MHEAR International Audio-Visual Speech Enhancement Challenge (AVSEC-4) as a satellite event of Interspeech 2025 in Rotterdam, on 16th August 2025.

The Audio-Visual Speech Enhancement Challenge (AVSEC) provides a common framework for the evaluation of audio-visual speech enhancement and separation systems. Building upon three successful editions of the Challenge (SLT 2022, ASRU 2023 and Interspeech 2024), we expect the fourth edition to further advance system performance, provide space to reflect on the scope and limitations of current audio-visual speech enhancement technologies and transform multimodal assistive hearing and speech communication systems of the future. As in previous editions of the challenge, systems will be ranked according to results of listening tests with human participants.

In addition to a carefully curated audio-visual dataset, we provide face landmarks of train/dev datasets and scripts for objective evaluation. A new baseline model for AVSEC-4 has been released. Baseline models of previous AVSEC editions are also available.

To register for the challenge and access the AVSEC-4 dataset please follow the guidelines on the website:

https://challenge.cogmhear.org

AVSEC scripts are available here: https://github.com/cogmhear/avse_challenge

Results will be announced at the 4th COG-MHEAR International Audio-Visual Speech Enhancement Challenge workshop (satellite event of Interspeech 2025).

Important dates:

21st March 2025: Release of training and development data.
2nd April 2025: Release of baseline system.
May 2025: Evaluation data release.
May 2025: Leaderboard open for submissions.
May 2025: Paper submission opens.
June 2025: Deadline for challenge submissions and one-page system description submission.
July 2025: Paper submission closes.
July 2025: Acceptance notification.
July 2025: early release of evaluation results.
August 2025: camera-ready paper.

4th COG-MHEAR International Audio-Visual Speech Enhancement Challenge workshop proceedings:

We invite prospective authors to submit either 2-page extended abstracts or full-length papers of 4-6 pages following the Interspeech 2025 paper template. We also plan to invite extended AVSEC-4 Workshop papers for submission to a journal special issue (details to be confirmed later).

We welcome Workshop submissions from both participants of the challenge as well as those interested in AVSEC related research topics including but not limited to the following:

Low-latency approaches to audio-visual speech enhancement and separation.
Human auditory-inspired models of multi-modal speech perception and enhancement.
Energy-efficient audio-visual speech enhancement and separation methods.
Machine learning for diverse target listeners and diverse listening scenarios.
Audio quality & intelligibility assessment of audio-visual speech enhancement systems.
Objective metrics to predict quality & intelligibility from audio-visual stimuli.
Understanding human speech perception in competing speaker scenarios in real world and virtual environments.
Clinical applications of audio-visual speech enhancement and separation, e.g. multi-modal hearing assistive technologies for hearing-impaired listeners, and speech-enabled communication aids to support autistic people with speech disorders.
Accessibility and human-centric factors in the design and evaluation of innovative multimodal technologies, including multimodal corpus development, public perceptions, ethics considerations, standards, societal, economic and political impacts.

The call for papers is available here: https://challenge.cogmhear.org/#/getting-started/call-for-papers

Further information about the workshop registration process will be made available soon through the challenge website and the mailing list.

We look forward to seeing you in Rotterdam.

AVSEC organising team

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.