Automatic audiometry using auditory steady-state response and sequential test strategy applied to volunteers with normal hearing

Abstract

Purpose: In the present study, a new procedure to perform automatic audiometry using multifrequency Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR) is proposed.

Methods: The automatic audiometry procedure consists of detecting the presence of multifrequency ASSR in real-time using the sequential test strategy and by adjusting the stimulus intensity independently. The ASSR audiometric thresholds of 18 adult volunteers with normal hearing were determined by automatically (four simultaneous frequencies per ear) at modulation frequencies in the 80 Hz range. The exam time and the difference between ASSR thresholds and pure-tone behavioural hearing thresholds were estimated as performance measures.

Results: The results showed that automatic audiometry can reduce the number of intensity levels used to obtain the ASSR threshold by up to 58% when compared to audiometry without using the techniques applied in automatic audiometry. In addition, the average of the difference between ASSR thresholds and Pure-Tone Behavioural Hearing thresholds was around 19 dB, which is similar to the results reported in similar studies.

Conclusions: The audiometric procedure proposed in this study is fully automatic, i.e., does not require any human supervision throughout the exam, and is able to significantly reduce the conventional exam time.

Keywords: Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR); Automatic audiometry; Electroencephalography (EEG); Multivariate detector; Sequential test strategy.