Self-Managed Sound Enhancement via Individualized Auditory Profiles
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Solution Overview
Problem
Individuals with hearing impairments face challenges in effectively using hearing aids due to varying sound loudness tolerance profiles, leading to discomfort and potential hearing damage, especially during phone conversations and music listening, as conventional systems fail to account for personal audiometric frequency tolerances and environmental noise.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that capture individualized audiological profiles through self-administered testing, accounting for transducer effects and environmental noise, to automatically enhance audio signals, ensuring comfortable loudness levels and mitigating tinnitus, using software-based signal processing on devices like smartphones or personal amplifiers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If hearing aids amplify sound to compensate for hearing loss, then hearing capability is improved, but hearing discomfort and potential damage may occur due to exceeding individual loudness tolerance levels
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts amplification parameters based on the user's individual loudness tolerance profile. It measures the uncomfortable loudness level (UCL) at each audiometric frequency and uses these parameters to control the hearing aid's gain, ensuring amplification stays within safe and comfortable limits for each specific frequency rather than applying uniform amplification
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary measurement of the user's loudness tolerance profile before providing hearing enhancement. By conducting self-administered hearing tests to determine UCL at various frequencies in advance, the system establishes safe amplification boundaries that prevent discomfort and damage during subsequent hearing aid use
2Reliability
If conventional hearing aids provide uniform amplification across all frequencies, then overall hearing is improved, but individual frequency tolerance differences are not accounted for leading to discomfort
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different amplification levels at different audiometric frequencies based on the user's specific tolerance at each frequency. Instead of uniform amplification, the hearing aid adjusts gain locally at each frequency band according to the measured UCL profile, providing customized frequency-specific enhancement that respects individual tolerance variations
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from static uniform amplification to dynamic frequency-specific amplification. The hearing aid continuously references the user's measured loudness tolerance profile to adjust amplification levels across different frequencies, creating a dynamic response that adapts to the user's specific hearing characteristics rather than applying a fixed gain structure
3Measurement precision
If self-administered hearing testing is implemented to capture individual profiles, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables users to perform their own hearing tests without requiring professional audiologists or complex clinical equipment. The smartphone application guides users through self-administered testing procedures, automatically capturing hearing threshold and loudness tolerance data, thereby simplifying the process while maintaining measurement precision through automated analysis
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses a smartphone, which is a universal device already present in most users' possession, to perform multiple functions including hearing testing, profile analysis, and hearing aid control. This multi-functional approach eliminates the need for separate specialized testing equipment, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining measurement accuracy
4Productivity
If hearing aids are used during phone conversations and music listening, then communication and entertainment are improved, but feedback and inconvenience occur
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts the hearing enhancement function from traditional hearing aids and integrates it directly into the smartphone's audio processing chain. By processing audio signals through the smartphone's existing microphone and speaker system, the invention eliminates the need for separate hearing aid hardware during phone conversations and music listening, removing the feedback issue while maintaining convenience
Data Source
AI summary
A system for capturing an individual's hearing characteristics, including loudness tolerance levels at different sound frequencies, as an individualized shaped auditory profile for automatically enhancing audio to complement and address an individual's hearing deficits experienced via a particular signal pathway including the audio device, the sound environment, and the individual's hearing capabilities. The auditory profile is used to produce enhanced sound subsequently transmitted to the individual via the same signal pathway. The enhanced sound may be produced with consideration of both ears' auditory profile shapes together to increase the dynamic range of the enhanced sound. The sound enhancement can be introduced gradually over a sound reproduction session or a period of time of use. Manual gain adjustments applied by multiple users to particular sound enhancement are recorded and used in pattern recognition to allow the system to learn and suggest alternatives to the desired sound enhancement for the auditory profile.