Objective
The project is concerned with the development of a wearable prototype aid, providing optimal auditory support for lipreading to the substantial numbers of people in Europe with such profound hearing impairment that conventional aids are of little assistance. This new approach is designed to provide clear speech contrastive information in everyday conditions of noise and reverberation, both of which cause particular problems in the use of conventional hearing aids for this population.
The project is aimed at the co-ordinated European-wide use of the speech pattern extraction and matching techniques in order to assist an important, rather neglected, hearing disabled population. By analysing out perceptually important components of speech, it introduces a significant advance over current amplifying hearing aids.
In the proposed system essential elements of speech in different European languages will be extracted in real time by the aid's digital signal processor and then presented in a form matched to the users receptive abilities. The result of the project will be a basic prototype wearable aid adapted to suit Dutch, English, French and Swedish. The approach promises to be highly cost effective and makes use of new speech processing methods derived from recent advances in speech technology; It is particularly appropriate for the elderly, in whom progressive profound hearing loss is relatively prevalent, and who might not be fit for the surgery involved in cochlear implantation. It also offers a range of practical possibilities for further development; For example, in videophony, this approach can very simply be extended to operate with telephone speech, which is of little utility to those whose most useful residual hearing is at frequencies below the telephone pass-band. The project would contribute to the definition of European standards of assessment in these areas.
Major developments in hearing aids and other related rehabilitation technologies are planned as a consequence of these initial research results.
The main industrial partner is one of the largest manufacturers of hearing aids in the world, while University support is in laboratories and clinically based research groups which already make important contributions to EC speech and communications technology research.
As the ultimate product which may result from the proposed project could, in the target population, replace the need for surgical implants with a device to be fitted externally, major cost savings can be achieved by national health authorities.
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NW1 2HE London
United Kingdom