ReBiHear: Restoring Binaural Hearing through Individualized Wireless Sound Coding Strategies for Cochlear Implant Users

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A cochlear implant (CI) is a small electronic device that is surgically implanted in the inner ear and can restore the sense of hearing of a profoundly deaf person by electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Although nowadays speech intelligibility in quiet environments and even speech over the telephone represents no major problem formost CI users, speech intelligibility in noisy environments is still a major challenge. CI users need significantly higher Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs) to achieve the same speech intelligibility as normal hearing listeners. For this reason, binaural speech enhancementtechniques have emerged to improve the SNR in noisy acoustic conditions by making use of the information captured by the microphones on both the left and the right ear in a combined signal processing. However, the transmission of the audio signals from oneear to the other needs to be done with low latency, low bit rate and very high quality such that the binaural algorithms can improve speech performance in noise. This project builds on the results of previous research on coding of electrical stimulation patterns for binaural signal processing. It will investigate the fundamental mechanisms of binaural fusion to explain the variability in binaural performance of bilateral CI (BiCI) users and proposes a new binaural sound coding strategy (i-BiNoM) with a new source coding algorithm. i-BiNoM will be designed considering individual binaural integration capabilities and will include binaural speech enhancement methods including ideal band selection for low frequencies to improve speech intelligibility in BiCIs. Moreover, this binaural sound coding strategy will interchange information between the two CIs wirelessly which will be coded by means of a hybrid Audio-Electrocodec that will compress both magnitude and phase information captured by the microphones of the CIs. The planned project is a continuation of the collaboration between the Auditory Prosthetic Group of the Department of Otolaryngology that is part of Medical University Hannover (MHH) and the Institut für Informationsverarbeitung (TNT) of Leibniz Universität Hannover. In the course of the project both project partners will make significant progress in their field of research in particular data reduction for audioapplications (TNT) and binaural signal enhancement for CIs (MHH). In addition, this cooperation is a great opportunity to exchange knowledge between an engineering department and a medical school. Doing so, engineering methods and medical expertise can be combined to ensure the success of the project.