Audiometric Earphone - Phase 1

测听耳机 - 第 1 阶段

• 批准号: 6990287
• 负责人: ROBERT H MARGOLIS
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: AUDIOLOGY, INC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-01 至 2006-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6990287
• 关键词: audiometry; bioengineering /biomedical engineering; biomedical automation; biomedical equipment development; clinical biomedical equipment; clinical research; diagnosis quality /standard; ear disorder diagnosis; health economics; hearing tests; human subject; mathematical model; otoacoustic emission; psychophysics

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：本项目旨在开发一种用于诊断测听的耳机，其功能将显着提高效率并降低常规听力测试的成本。最常用的耳机采用具有若干不期望的特性的贴耳设计，包括1）“闭塞效应”，对骨传导刺激的敏感性的人为增加; 2）差的环境噪声排除; 3）声音的过度经颅传导; 4）传递到人耳的声压的高受试者间可变性;以及5）差的舒适度。闭塞效应需要在骨传导测试期间暴露测试耳。这要求测试人员在纯音测试期间多次改变换能器布置。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传感器是不可接受的，因为这与降低人员成本的目标相反。环境噪声排除效果差，需要在昂贵的声音室中进行测试。声音的过度经颅传导导致与非测试耳的响应相关的错误，该错误不能总是通过掩蔽噪声来消除。 受试者间变异性结果增加了与阈值测量相关的方差。舒适度差限制了一些患者参与测试的时间。其他耳机可以解决这些问题中的一些，但不是全部。在这个项目中，将开发一种耳机，1）最大限度地减少闭塞效应，允许整个纯音听力测试使用单个换能器布置进行，并促进自动化测试方法; 2）增加环境噪声排除，消除（在许多环境中）需要消音室; 3）减少声音的经颅传导，导致与非测试耳的响应相关的更少的错误; 4）减少受试者间的可变性;以及5）增加舒适度。除了满足这些目标外，耳机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显著变化。