论文标题
低成本听力筛查的无线耳塞
Wireless earbuds for low-cost hearing screening
论文作者
论文摘要
我们提出了第一个可以通过检测耳声发射来执行听力筛查的无线耳塞硬件。传统的观点是，检测到耳蜗产生的微弱声音需要敏感且昂贵的声学硬件。因此，用于听力筛查的医疗设备花费了数千美元，在低收入国家和中等收入国家中无法访问。我们表明，通过使用低成本的声学硬件设计无线耳塞并将其与无线传感算法相结合，我们可以可靠地识别耳声发射并进行听力筛选。我们的算法将频率调制的鸣与从低成本扬声器发出的宽带脉冲结合在一起，以可靠地与入耳式反射和回声可靠地分开耳声发射。我们进行了一项临床研究，在两个医疗保健部位进行了50次耳朵。我们的研究表明，低成本耳塞检测出100％灵敏度和89.7％特异性的听力损失，这与8000美元的医疗设备的性能相当。通过开发低成本和开源的可穿戴技术，我们的工作可以通过使这些医疗设备民主化来解决全球健康不平等。
We present the first wireless earbud hardware that can perform hearing screening by detecting otoacoustic emissions. The conventional wisdom has been that detecting otoacoustic emissions, which are the faint sounds generated by the cochlea, requires sensitive and expensive acoustic hardware. Thus, medical devices for hearing screening cost thousands of dollars and are inaccessible in low and middle income countries. We show that by designing wireless earbuds using low-cost acoustic hardware and combining them with wireless sensing algorithms, we can reliably identify otoacoustic emissions and perform hearing screening. Our algorithms combine frequency modulated chirps with wideband pulses emitted from a low-cost speaker to reliably separate otoacoustic emissions from in-ear reflections and echoes. We conducted a clinical study with 50 ears across two healthcare sites. Our study shows that the low-cost earbuds detect hearing loss with 100% sensitivity and 89.7% specificity, which is comparable to the performance of a $8000 medical device. By developing low-cost and open-source wearable technology, our work may help address global health inequities in hearing screening by democratizing these medical devices.
