System and methods for creating reduced test sets used in assessing subject response to stimuli

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9844326-B2
Application number	US-20149208-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 29, 2008
Priority date	Aug 29, 2008
Publication date	Dec 19, 2017
Grant date	Dec 19, 2017

Abstract

A computer-implemented method for generating a test set for testing a subject using a computer system comprising logic-based processing circuitry is provided. The method includes the step of selecting one or more features from among a plurality of features, wherein a measurable effect on the subject of each feature selected is based on a predetermined threshold. The method also includes generating one or more classes of stimuli based on the selected features. The method further includes selecting stimuli from one or more of said classes for presenting to the subject.

First claim

We claim:

1. A computer-implemented method for generating a test set for testing a subject using a computer system comprising logic-based processing circuitry, the method comprising:
selecting at least one feature from among a plurality of features, wherein the at least one feature is selected based upon a measure of the role of the at least one feature in determining the subject's hearing ability;
based on the at least one selected feature, generating one or more classes of stimuli;
presenting at least one stimulus from the one or more classes of stimuli to a subject;
modifying at least one of the one or more classes, wherein modifying at least one of the one or more classes comprises randomly removing a stimulus from at least one of the one or more classes to generate one or more modified classes;
presenting at least one stimulus from the one or more modified classes; and
adjusting at least one operational parameter of a hearing-enhancement device based at least in part on a hearing performance of the patient with respect to different parameter values.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising selecting at least one stimulus associated with a non-selected feature to present to the subject.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein selecting at least one stimulus associated with a non-selected feature is repeated iteratively.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein iteratively selecting at least one stimulus associated with a non-selected feature comprises selecting one less stimulus from a class comprising more than one stimulus.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the at least one stimulus associated with a non-selected feature is randomly selected.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising initially presenting each of a predetermined number of stimuli prior to selecting from among the plurality of features associated with each of the predetermined number of stimuli.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein selecting from among the plurality of features further comprises computing for a feature a product equal to a value assigned to the feature times a number of stimuli influenced by the feature.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining a measure of significance of each class of stimuli on assessing the hearing capability of the subject.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the measure of significance of the i th class is equal to

p
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i

=

{

1

n
i

⁢

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j
=
1

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i

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P
ij

if
⁢

⁢

n
i

>
0

0

otherwise

where n i is the number of stimuli contained in the i th class, and P ij is an empirically determined value based upon an assessment of subject responses to administered stimuli.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining the number of times to present different stimuli to the subject based upon a computed measure of subject hearing weakness, the measure, s i , being defined as

s
i

=

⌈

k
×

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i

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e
j

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wherein e i is a number of stimuli selected from the i th class and erroneously recognized by the subject, wherein c is a number of stimuli contained in the i th class, and where k is a predetermined constant.

11. A computer-implemented method of testing a hearing-impaired patient using a computer system including logic-based processing circuitry, the method comprising:
audibly presenting a first plurality of phonemes to the patient, wherein the first plurality consists of at least one phoneme from each of a plurality of preexisting phoneme sets, each preexisting phoneme set corresponding to a predetermined feature selected for testing a hearing capability of the patient;
based on a response of the patient to each audibly presented phoneme, generating a first assessment of the hearing capability of the patient;
audibly presenting a second plurality of phonemes to the patient and generating a second assessment of the hearing capability of the patient based on patient response, wherein the second plurality of phonemes consists of at least one less phoneme than the first plurality of phonemes, wherein the at least one less phoneme is selected at random; and
adjusting at least one operational parameter of a hearing-enhancement device based at least in part on a hearing performance of the patient with respect to different parameter values.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the second plurality of phonemes is created by eliminating from the first plurality of phonemes one phoneme from each of the plurality of preexisting phoneme sets that comprise more than one phoneme, and further comprising audibly presenting a third plurality of phonemes, wherein the third plurality of phonemes is created by eliminating from the first plurality of phonemes two phonemes from each of the plurality of preexisting phoneme sets that comprise more than two phonemes, wherein the two phonemes are selected at random.

13. A computer-based system for generating a test set for testing a subject, the system comprising:
at least one processor;
an electronic memory

Assignees

• Banerjee Bonny
• Krause Lee Stanley
• Holmes Alice
• Shrivastav Rahul
• Univ Florida
• Cochlear Ltd

Inventors

• Banerjee Bonny
• Krause Lee Stanley
• Holmes Alice
• Shrivastav Rahul

Classifications

• H04R25/70

  Adaptation of deaf aid to hearing loss, e.g. initial electronic fitting · CPC title

• H04R2225/43

  Signal processing in hearing aids to enhance the speech intelligibility · CPC title

• A61B5/121 Primary

  evaluating hearing capacity · CPC title