Title
Modified segmental signal-to-noise ratio reflecting spectral masking effect for evaluating the performance of hearing aid algorithms
Abstract
Most traditional objective indices don't distinguish between a real sound and a perceived sound, and therefore, these indices have limitations in regard to the evaluation of the real effect of an algorithm under investigation on the auditory perception of a hearing-impaired person. Though several objective indices, such as perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and composite measurements, that reflect the psychoacoustic factors were already in use, it is helpful to develop more objective indices that take into account human psychoacoustic factors in order to accurately evaluate the performance of hearing aid algorithms. In this study, a new objective index that reflects the spectral masking effect into the calculation of the conventional segmental signal-to-noise ratio (segSNR) was proposed. The performance of this index was evaluated by analyzing the correlation of the result and (1) the mean opinion score and (2) the speech recognition threshold tests of 15 normal-hearing volunteers and 15 hearing-impaired patients. The correlation values of the proposed index were relatively high (0.83-0.97) across various ambient noise situations. Based on these experimental results, the proposed index has the potential to be widely used as a measuring index for the performance evaluation of various hearing aid algorithms prior to conducting clinical experiments.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1016/j.specom.2013.05.005
Speech Communication
Keywords
Field
DocType
proposed index,modified segmental signal-to-noise ratio,spectral masking effect,objective index,perceptual evaluation,performance evaluation,new objective index,hearing aid algorithm,traditional objective index,measuring index,correlation value,account human psychoacoustic factor,nmr,pesq,smc,wss,is
Masking (art),Ambient noise level,Computer science,Artificial intelligence,PESQ,Psychoacoustics,Pattern recognition,Hearing aid,Algorithm,Mean opinion score,Masking threshold,Speech recognition,Correlation
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
55
10
0167-6393
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.36
7
Authors
9
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sunhyun Yook121.72
Kyoung Won Nam232.46
Heepyung Kim311.04
See Youn Kwon410.36
Dongwook Kim561.17
Sangmin Lee631.44
Sung Hwa Hong732.46
Dong Pyo Jang8537.04
In Young Kim925032.24