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Adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss can use over-the-counter hearing aids to treat their hearing loss at a fraction of traditional hearing care costs. These products incorporate self-fitting methods that allow end-users to configure their hearing aids without the help of an audiologist. A self-fitting method helps users configure the gain-frequency responses that control the amplification for each frequency band of the incoming sound. This paper considers how to guide the design of self-fitting methods by evaluating certain aspects of their design using computational tools before performing user studies. Most existing fitting methods provide various user interfaces to allow users to select a configuration from a predetermined set of presets. Accordingly, it is essential for the presets to meet the hearing needs of a large fraction of users who suffer from varying degrees of hearing loss and have unique hearing preferences. To this end, we propose a novel metric for evaluating the effectiveness of preset-based approaches by computing their population coverage. The population coverage estimates the fraction of users for which a self-fitting method can find a configuration they prefer. A unique aspect of our approach is a probabilistic model that captures how a user's unique preferences differ from other users with similar hearing loss. Next, we propose methods for building preset-based and slider-based self-fitting methods that maximize the population coverage. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms can effectively select a small number of presets that provide higher population coverage than clustering-based approaches. Moreover, we may use our algorithms to configure the number of increments of slider-based methods. We expect that the computational tools presented in this article will help reduce the cost of developing new self-fitting methods by allowing researchers to evaluate population coverage before performing user studies.
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Comparing population coverage between hearing aids using presets vs Bose CustomTune.
The self-fitting Bose SoundControl™ hearing aid is the first of its kind to gain FDA clearance. In the self-fitting process, the Bose Hear app uses the Bose CustomTune™ interface for mapping to a wide range of target gain profiles, derived from a hearing loss database. This article compares the population coverage—or the percentage of people who would be able to find a frequency gain profile similar to a NAL-NL2 prescription fit—of SoundControl to other self-fitting amplification devices which typically feature only 1 to 4 preset gain profiles.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1838830
- PAR ID:
- 10309718
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Hearing review
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1178-6698
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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