Audiometric Earphone - Phase 1

描述(由申请人提供)：该项目旨在开发一种用于诊断性听力测试的耳机，其功能将显著提高常规听力测试的效率并降低成本。最常用的耳机采用了一种超听觉设计，具有几个不受欢迎的特征，包括1)“遮挡效应”，即人为增加对骨传导刺激的敏感度；2)较差的环境噪音排除；3)过度的经颅传导声音；4)传递给人耳的声压在受试者之间的高度变异性；以及5)舒适性差。在骨传导测试中，由于咬合效应，测试耳必须被揭开。这要求测试仪在纯音测试期间多次更改换能器布置。在手动测试中，此要求可能会增加几分钟的测试时间。对于自动化测试，在测试期间需要多次重新定位换能器是不可接受的，因为这对降低人员成本的目标适得其反。较差的环境噪声排除要求在昂贵的声室中进行测试。声音的过度经颅传导会导致与非测试耳的反应有关的错误，而这些错误并不总是通过掩蔽噪声来消除的。 受试者之间的可变性结果增加了与阈值测量相关的方差。较差的舒适性限制了一些患者参加测试的时间。其他耳机可以解决其中的一些问题，但不是全部。在这个项目中，将开发一种耳机，它将1)最大限度地减少遮挡效应，允许使用单一换能器进行整个纯音听力测试，并促进自动化测试方法；2)增加环境噪音排除，消除(在许多环境中)对声音衰减室的需要；3)减少声音的经颅传导，从而减少与非测试耳朵反应相关的误差；4)减少受试者之间的变异性；以及5)增加舒适性。除了达到这些目标外，耳机还必须具有与其他测听耳机相似的频率响应，以避免用于语音测试的刺激的频率内容发生重大变化。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project seeks to develop an earphone for diagnostic audiometry with features that will significantly increase the efficiency and decrease the cost of routine hearing testing. The most-often used earphones emply a supra-aural design that has several undesirable characteristics, including 1) an "occlusion effect", an artificial increase in sensitivity to bone-conducted stimuli; 2) poor ambient noise exclusion; 3) excessive transcranial conduction of sound; 4) high inter-subject variability in sound pressures delivered to human ears; and 5) poor comfort. The occlusion effect necessitates that the test ear be uncovered during bone conduction testing. This requires that the tester change the transducer arrangement several times during pure tone testing. In manual testing, this requirement can add several minutes to the test time. For automated testing, the need to reposition transducers several times during the test is unacceptable because it is counterproductive to the goal of reducing personnel costs., The poor ambient noise exclusion requires that testing be performed in expensive sound rooms. The excessive transcranial conduction of sound results in errors associated with responses by the non-test ear that cannot always be eliminated by masking noise. The inter-subject variability results increases the variance associated with threshold measures. The poor comfort limits the time that some patients will participate in the test. Other earphones are available that address some, but not all, of these problems. In this project, an earphone will be developed that 1) minimizes the occlusion effect permitting the entire pure tone hearing test to be conducted with a single transducer arrangement and facilitating automated test methods; 2) increases ambient noise exclusion, eliminating (in many environments) the need for sound-attenuating rooms; 3) decreases transcranial conduction of sound resulting in fewer errors associated with responses of the non-test ear; 4) decreases inter-subject variability; and 5) increases comfort. In addition to meeting these goals, the earphone must have a frequency response that is similar to other audiometric earphones to avoid significant changes in the frequency content of stimuli used for speech tests.