Signal Processing for Rapid Hearing Assessment

描述(由申请人提供)：客观评估人类听觉系统健康的能力对于新生儿听力筛查等应用非常重要。在这个国家，及早识别听力障碍儿童是一项重要的公共卫生目标。获得有关听觉神经系统健康状况的客观信息的技术之一是测量稳态听觉诱发电位(SSAEP)。为了减少背景噪声的影响，目前的诱发电位估计技术需要极长的数据串。所需的较长的测量时间是诱发电位测量在临床试验中广泛采用的主要技术障碍。提出了一种新的SSAEP快速估计信号处理技术。该技术基于一种新的非线性自适应信号处理方法，在快速提取隐藏在大量噪声中的微弱信号方面显示出巨大的前景。它在耳声发射快速估计中的成功应用是其潜力的一个例子。使用模拟和真实临床数据进行的初步研究结果也显示了所提出的技术在快速估计SSAEP信号方面的巨大潜力。本研究项目的目的是充分开发所提出的技术，并评估其在使用SSAEP测试进行快速听力评估中的临床可行性。更具体地说，建议研究的目标是设计和优化建议的信号处理技术，并在58个受试者的一组临床数据上评估其功能，这些数据已经通过与加拿大主要听力研究中心之一的合作为该项目提供。信号处理设计工作包括架构设计、参数调整和使用真实数据和模拟数据的性能测试。本项目的另一个目标是实现SSAEP测量设备的研究原型，并在临床环境中测试其性能。工程开发阶段包括在数字硬件系统上实施拟议的SSAEP估计技术，而这项工作的临床部分涉及通过对至少30名婴儿受试者进行临床测试来对系统进行功能测试。将通过在实践中出现的各种情况下收集的数据测试其功能来研究该技术的可行性及其临床潜力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability to objectively assess the health of the human auditory system is important for applications such as newborn hearing screening. The early identification of children with hearing impairment is an important public health objective in this country. 1 of the techniques to obtain objective information about the health of the auditory nervous system is the measurement of the steady state auditory evoked potentials (SSAEPs). Current techniques of estimation of evoked potentials require extremely long strings of data in order to mitigate the effect of background noise. The required long measurement time is the main technical obstacle in the widespread adoption of evoked potential measurement in clinical tests. A novel signal processing technique of fast estimation of SSAEPs is proposed. The proposed technique is based on a new nonlinear adaptive signal processing method that has shown a great promise in fast extraction of weak signals buried under large amounts of noise. Its successful application to fast estimation of otoacoustic emissions is an example of its potential. The results of the preliminary studies conducted using simulated as well as real clinical data show the great potential of the proposed technique for fast estimation of the SSAEP signals as well. The aim of this research project is to fully develop the proposed technique and evaluate its clinical viability in rapid hearing assessment using SSAEP tests. More specifically, it is an objective of the proposed research to design and optimize the proposed signal processing technique, and evaluate its functionality on a set of clinical data recorded on 58 subjects, which has already been made available for this project through collaborations with 1 of the major Canadian hearing research centers. The signal processing design effort involves architectural design, parameter tuning and performance testing using real and simulated data. It is another objective of this project to implement a research prototype of a SSAEP measurement device, and test its performance in clinical environments. The engineering development phase includes implementation of the proposed SSAEP estimation technique on a digital hardware system while the clinical component of this effort involves a functionality test of the system by conducting clinical tests on a subject population of at least 30 infants. The feasibility of the technology and its clinical potential will be studied by testing its functionality on the data collected in various situations arising in practice.