People with sensorineural hearing loss have great difficulty understanding speech in moderately noisy environments and/or reverberant environments that do not present any difficulty for normally hearing people. The overall objective of this project is to develop and evaluate a novel method of noise and reverberation reduction that could be incorporated in a modern digital hearing aid. Signal processing algorithms for this application will be evaluated with both normally hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Phase I will be concerned with algorithm development and evaluation without the practical constraints imposed by the small size and limited power consumption of a wearable hearing aid. Phase II will develop methods for implementing in a practical, wearable unit the most promising of the algorithms evaluated in Phase I. The final product will be a hearing aid with noise and reverberation reducing capabilities that will greatly improve the ability of hearing-impaired people to communicate in moderately noisy/reverberant environments.
A hearing aid capable of noise and reverberation reduction in everyday conditions of use, (i.e., in moderately noisy and reverberant environments) will have considerable commercial potential. Further, the method of signal processing will have other important commercial applications.
