Smartphone-Based Hearing Self-Assessment System Using Hearing Aids With Fast Audiometry Method

Hearing loss is an irreversible damage. Patients with hearing loss usually use hearing aids or cochlear implants for hearing compensation. Hearing test is used to detect hearing-loss degree in different frequency bands for both ears or for the single ear with hearing loss. The conventional hearing test method requires an audiologist to conduct the test process, which causes a burden for the patient in respect of cost and time. This paper describes a new smartphone-based audiometry method for the hearing self-assessment using hearing aids as the audio sources, a smartphone as the user-interface and controller. The hearing aids are controlled by the smartphone through low-power wireless communication link. The stimulus audio signal with the feature of sweeping amplitude out of the hearing aids is generated by an innovative “coarse-to-fine focus” algorithm, which reduces test time and improves test accuracy as well. The proposed method is verified by a demo smartphone-based hearing self-assessment (SHSA) system, which consists of hearing aid hardware, user-interface application, and stimuli generating algorithm. The objective measurement of the demo system verifies the precision of the sound level within a variation less than 0.5 dB HL for all six frequency bands. The subjective test with 20 samples with different levels of hearing loss in a sound-proof booth indicates that the SHSA system has an average difference of less than 6 dB HL for different hearing-loss severity, and is capable of saving more than 50% hearing test time on average compared to the conventional hearing test.