Actors keen to mimic a particular accent could be helped by new 3D video footage showing what happens inside our mouths when we speak.

Scots researchers used ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging to record the inner workings of the human vocal tract when producing sounds.

Five Scottish universities contributed to the Seeing Speech project, which will also help speech therapists and students of linguistics and phonetics.

Medical ultrasound machines took an image of the surface of the tongue during speech and, using MRI, they recorded the entire vocal tract including the action of the larynx and the soft palate.

Academics said it gave the best understanding yet of the processes of speech.

Eleanor Lawson, a phonetics and sociolinguistics lecturer at Glasgow, said: "We hope that Seeing Speech will provide the starting point for developing into a much more substantial teaching and learning resource for the future."

The results are available for the public to see at the website seeingspeech.arts.gla.ac.uk/uti