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Digital Signal Processing in Audiology

Final Report Summary - AUDIS (Digital signal processing in audiology)

European societies are ageing and younger people are increasingly subject to harmful noise in a variety of daily life situations. As a consequence, a significant percentage of the European population is affected by hearing loss. Moreover, the hearing instrument market can be expected to further increase in the years to come as only one out of five people in need of a hearing aid actually owns one. Some of the most pressing challenges in the design of hearing instruments are enhancing speech intelligibility and speech quality in adverse acoustic conditions (high levels of noise and reverberation), controlling feedback, and processing the acoustic signal such that a high quality rendering of music signals is achieved.

The aim of the initial training network (ITN) AUDIS was to take up these challenges and to enable the development of signal processing algorithms and systems for the next generation digital hearing instruments. The project objective is to promote research and innovation in the interdisciplinary field of digital signal processing and audiology and to train highly qualified scientists who are proficient and comfortable with the broad interdisciplinary range of topics entailed. This includes a strong emphasis on user needs. Therefore, it is an integral part of this network to ensure that researchers involved are familiar with audiological evaluation methodology and develop a thorough understanding of user requirements.

Towards this end, the AUDIS Marie Curie ITN sponsored 13 early-stage research (ESR) fellows for a period of up to 36 months, five experienced research (ER) fellows for a period of up to 22 months each and visiting scientists. All fellows participated in a comprehensive research training programme with many network-wide scientific workshops and training sessions. These network-wide training events were complemented by individual on-site research training and complementary skills courses, such as time-management, scientific writing, research ethics and language courses. Furthermore, collaborative research has been fostered by means of several two-week mini-projects where three to five fellows worked on a common topic in one of the host labs. As a result of these training activities all AUDIS fellows, irrespective of their original background, have acquired the tools for successful research in the field of AUDIS. They have developed a common language and interact on various levels, from scientific discussions and collaborations to organisational and management issues.

The research performed by these fellows was grouped into the following three work packages (WPs):

1. WP1: Hearing and hearing impairments
2. WP2: Cochlear implants
3. WP3: Optimal acoustic front-ends.

Within the range of these WPs the AUDIS fellows have worked on innovative research projects. The research projects investigate new approaches to a number of issues such as understanding and simulating hearing loss, improved stimulation methods for binaural signal rendering in cochlear implants, separation of acoustic sources, noise and reverberation reduction and auditory scene analysis. The continuation of these research projects promises to yield a number of cutting edge solutions to the signal processing challenges in hearing instruments and thus provide additional benefits to users of future hearing instruments. All projects have achieved or surpassed the envisioned results. The work performed is documented in more than 54 peer-reviewed publications.

Besides the network-wide training events AUDIS has organised a winter school (January 2010, Bayrisch-Zell, Germany), a summer school (September 2011, Southampton, United Kingdom), and a final AUDIS workshop (September 2012, Aachen, Germany). The latter two were open to the public and have received significant attention. All of these events comprised presentations by leading researchers as well as active involvement of all research fellows.

Progress in key technological areas in Europe is currently hindered by the shortage of thoroughly trained scientists and developers. The AUDIS network has clearly contributed to fill this gap by providing highly trained and internationally well-connected scientists but has also fostered the cooperation between European research labs, visiting scientists and companies with a lasting impact.

Additional information about AUDIS is available on the project website at http://www.audis-itn.eu