Marathi Speech Intelligibility Enhancement Using I-AMS Based Neuro-Fuzzy Classifier Approach for Hearing Aid Users

Globally, 1.6 billion individuals suffered from hearing disability in 2019. According to the World Health Organization, by 2050, the number of people with hearing impairments will rise to 2.5 billion. Speech perception in noisy surroundings is a challenge for hearing aid users. This study aimed to design a novel methodology to improve the speech recognition ability of hearing aid users from various backgrounds. To improve speech enhancement, we propose a discrete cosine transform (DCT)-based improved amplitude-magnitude spectrogram (I-AMS) algorithm with a fuzzy classifier. First, the I-AMS approach disintegrates speech signals containing noise into time-frequency units and eliminates the noise present in the signal. Next, the time frequency units (t-f units), modulation frequency (fm), and centre frequency (fc) are extracted from the denoised signal. A neuro-fuzzy classifier was used to classify the background speech environment into three different classes. The proposed I-AMS algorithm was tested, achieved improvements in terms of sensitivity (+1.02%) and accuracy (+11.80%). Speech denoising revealed a 1.27% improvement in speech recognition performance.