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Development of Improved Software Intelligent System for Audiological Solutions

  • Patient Facing Systems
  • Published:
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Abstract

Of late, there has been an increase in hearing impairment cases and to provide the most advantageous solutions to them is an uphill task for audiologists. Significant difficulty faced by the audiologists is in effective programming of hearing aids to provide enhanced satisfaction to the users. The main aim of our study was to develop a software intelligent system (SIS): (i) to perform the required audiological investigations for finding the degree and type of hearing loss, and (ii) to suggest appropriate values of hearing aid parameters for enhancing the speech intelligibility and the satisfaction level among the hearing aid users. In this paper, we present a Neuro-Fuzzy based SIS to automatically predict and suggest the hearing-aid parameters such as gain values, compression ratio and threshold knee point, which are needed to be fixed for different octave frequencies of sound inputs during the hearing-aid trial. The test signals for audiological investigations are generated through the standard hardware present in a personal computer system and with the aid of a software algorithm. The proposed system was validated with 243 subjects’ data collected at the Government General Hospital, Chennai, India. The calculated sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the proposed audiometer incorporated in the SIS were 98.6%, 96.4 and 98.2%, respectively, by comparing its interpretations with those of the ‘gold standard’ audiometers. Furthermore, 91% (221 of 243) of the hearing impaired subjects attained satisfaction in the first hearing aid trials itself with the gain values as recommended by the improved SIS. The proposed system reduced around 75% of the ‘trial and error’ time spent by audiologists for enhancing satisfactory usage of the hearing aid. Hence, the proposed SIS could be used to find the degree and type of hearing loss and to recommend hearing aid parameters to provide optimal solutions to the hearing aid users.

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Abbreviations

ABG:

Air Bone Gap

AI:

Artificial Intelligence

ASHA:

American Speech-Language Hearing Association

CD:

Compact Disk

CP:

Compression Parameters

CR:

Compression Ratio

HL:

Hearing Level

LDL:

Loudness Discomfort Level,

LEAC:

Left Ear Air Conduction

LEBC:

Left Ear Bone Conduction

MTH:

Minimum Threshold of Hearing

PC:

Personal Computer

PTAvg :

Pure Tone Average

REAC:

Right Ear Air Conduction

REBC:

Right Ear Bone Conduction

SDS:

Speech Discrimination Score

SDT:

Speech Discrimination Threshold

SRT:

Speech Reception Threshold

SIS:

Software Intelligent System

SPL:

Sound Pressure Level

TK:

Threshold Knee Point

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the ethical clearance committee members of the Madras Medical College and Hospital, Chennai, India, for their approval to proceed with the study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rajalakshmi Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 602117, India

    S. Rajkumar

  2. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600025, India

    S. Muttan

  3. SRM University, Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, 603203, India

    V. Sapthagirivasan

  4. Medical Solution’s Group, Product and Engineering Services Department, IT Service Company, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560066, India

    V. Sapthagirivasan

  5. Department of Ear, Nose & Throat, Madras Medical College & Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600003, India

    V. Jaya & S. S. Vignesh

Authors
  1. S. Rajkumar
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  2. S. Muttan
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  3. V. Sapthagirivasan
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  4. V. Jaya
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  5. S. S. Vignesh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. Rajkumar.

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Conflict of interest

I, corresponding author declare that this work has no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Ethical approval is obtained from the ethical clearance committee members of the Madras Medical College and Hospital, Chennai, India, to proceed with the study.

(In case animals were involved) Ethical approval: No animals included in the study.

Informed consent

Informed consent is obtained from all the individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Patient Facing Systems

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 Questionnaire for the hearing impaired subjects
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Rajkumar, S., Muttan, S., Sapthagirivasan, V. et al. Development of Improved Software Intelligent System for Audiological Solutions. J Med Syst 42, 127 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-0978-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-0978-6

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