Improving word recognition in noise among hearing-impaired subjects with a single-channel cochlear noise-reduction algorithm

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 132; no. 3; pp. 1718 - 1731
• Main Authors: Fink, Nir, Furst, Miriam, Muchnik, Chava
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melville, NY Acoustical Society of America 01.09.2012; American Institute of Physics
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Algorithms; Analysis of Variance; Audiometry, Pure-Tone; Audiometry, Speech; Audition; Auditory Threshold; Biological and medical sciences; Cochlear Implants; Comprehension; Correction of Hearing Impairment - psychology; Ear and associated structures. Auditory pathways and centers. Hearing. Vocal organ. Phonation. Sound production. Echolocation; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Hearing Aids; Hearing Disorders; Hebrew; Humans; Intelligibility; Male; Middle Aged; Noise; Noise - adverse effects; Perception; Perceptual Masking; Persons With Hearing Impairments - psychology; Persons With Hearing Impairments - rehabilitation; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Recognition (Psychology); Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Signal-To-Noise Ratio; Sound Spectrography; Speech Intelligibility; Speech Perception; Time Factors; Vertebrates: nervous system and sense organs; Word Recognition; Young Adult; Cochlea; Auditory disorder; Inner ear; Speech recognition
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.4739441

A common complaint of the hearing impaired is the inability to understand speech in noisy environments even with their hearing assistive devices. Only a few single-channel algorithms have significantly improved speech intelligibility in noise for hearing-impaired listeners. The current study introduces a cochlear noise reduction algorithm. It is based on a cochlear representation of acoustic signals and real-time derivation of a binary speech mask. The contribution of the algorithm for enhancing word recognition in noise was evaluated on a group of 42 normal-hearing subjects, 35 hearing-aid users, 8 cochlear implant recipients, and 14 participants with bimodal devices. Recognition scores of Hebrew monosyllabic words embedded in Gaussian noise at several signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) were obtained with processed and unprocessed signals. The algorithm was not effective among the normal-hearing participants. However, it yielded a significant improvement in some of the hearing-impaired subjects under different listening conditions. Its most impressive benefit appeared among cochlear implant recipients. More than 20% improvement in recognition score of noisy words was obtained by 12, 16, and 26 hearing-impaired at SNR of 30, 24, and 18 dB, respectively. The algorithm has a potential to improve speech intelligibility in background noise, yet further research is required to improve its performances.