• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.1E
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• pp.8-13
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• 2007

It has long been known that high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss (HFHL) can contribute to difficulty in speech understanding by elderly listeners. This study evaluated the relative contribution of HFHL and age to speech understanding. Subjects included adult middle-aged and old groups with normal hearing or with limited HFHL. The Hearing-in-Noise-Test (HINT) was used to measure speech perception performance in quiet and in noise. The middle-aged groups showed significant effects of HFHL for speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise, but the old groups showed the difference in quiet only due to high frequency hearing. The results suggest that HFHL may affect speech intelligibility differently with age and therefore hearing aid selection needs to take into account the influence of age.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.19-25
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• 2017

The aim of this study was to evaluate Magnetic Resonance Imaging safety by measuring the translational attraction, torque and susceptibility artifact for Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) implant at 1.5 T and 3.0 T MRI by standard criteria. In vitro assessment tools were made of acrylic-resin by American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F2052-06 and F2119-07 standard. Translational attraction of BAHA implant was measured by the maximum deflection angle at 96 cm position, where the magnetically induced deflection was the greatest. The torque was assessed by the qualitative criteria of evaluating the alignment and rotation pattern, when the BAHA implant was positioned on a line with $45^{\circ}$ intervals inside the circular container in the center of the bore. The susceptibility artifact images were obtained using the hanged test tool, which was filled with $CuSO_4$ solution. And then the artifact size was measured using Susceptibility A rtifact Measurement (SA M) software. In results, the translational attraction was 0 mm at both 1.5 T and 3.0 T and the torque was 0(no torque) at 1.5 T, and +1(mild torque) at 3.0 T. The size of susceptibility artifacts was between 13.20 mm and 38.91 mm. Therefore, The BAHA implant was safe for the patient in clinical MR environment.

• Proceedings of the KOR-BRONCHOESO Conference
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• 1978.06a
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• pp.9.2-9
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• 1978

Monaural and binaural hearing aid performance under quiet and noisy conditions were compared in regard to (1) the degree of hearing impairment, (2) the symmetry of pure tone audiogram, (3) the automatic gain control of the hearing aid. (4) hearing impairement with recruitment and, word discrimination ability. Performance using binaural hearing aids was consistently superior to that using monaural hearing aids. The results were as follows. 1. Speech detection thresholds were enhanced by a mean of 4.25dB when tested with danavox 747 PP stereo type hearing aid and by a mean of 4.12 dB when tested hearing aids connected seperately to the right and left ears. 2. Binaurally tested speech reception thresholds were superior to monaurally tested thresholds by a mean of 3.56dB when tested in quiet and by a mean of 5.56dB when tested in noise. 3. Binaurally tested word discrimination scores were also superior by a mean of 17.09% in quiet and by a mean 19.63% in noise. 4. Both SRT and word discrimination scores were performed best by subjects with moderately-severe impairement. The performance by one mildly impaired subject was the poorest of all performances. The levels of performance order were; moderately-severe loss, severe loss. moderate loss and mild loss. 5. The data obtained using AGC aids when compaired with that of linear amplification show that when AGC aids were worn in both ears. the results were very poor but when one AGC aid was worn in one ear and linear amplification in the other. the results were good. 6. The advantages of binaural hearing aids were obvious even in cases 1) with great diferences in hearing thresholds between right and left ears, 2) when the subject was unable to discriminate words without vision and. 3) when the subject had extreme recruitme t phenomenon.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.127-132
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• 2005

Transducers for implantable hearing aids need to be small and to have good performance in frequency responses and vibration properties. From this viewpoint, we Proposed a multi-layer actuator with the piezoelectric single crystal, PMN-PT. for the implantable hearing aid. and verified its adequacy through finite element analyses and experiments. PMN-PT multi-layer actuator samples were fabricated by stacking fourteen layers of the PMN-PT crystal. Each layer were $0.2{\cal}mm$ thick and the actuator sample was $2.8{\cal}mm$ thick in total. We evaluated the performance of the PMN-PT actuator through impedance analyses and vibration displacement measurements, and compared the result with that of a PZT actuator. Results of all the process confirmed the feasibility of the PMN-PT actuator as a good transducer for an implantable hearing aid.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.29-34
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• 2018

This paper presents a study on adapting optical communication technology using infrared ray for the enhancement of hearing aids in noisy environment. The transmitter module containing microphone and infrared ray-emitting diode converts audio signal to infrared optical signal and sends it out in the air. The receiver module located in a distance receives the infrared signal, converts it to electrical signal, and transfers it to an input of a digital hearing aid. Especially, the receiver module needs to be small, low voltage, and consume low power since it will be attached to hearing aids. Experiments with applying infrared communication technology of digital modulation method and analog non-modulation method show that the analog non-modulation method is adequate for infrared communication of approximately 5m distance indoor. Prototypes of transmitter module and receiver module were manufactured, and internal parameters of the digital hearing aid were adjusted to confirm normal transmit-receive operation of audio signals.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.623-629
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• 1998

To provide sufficient sound to the hearing-impaired person(HIP) who have many difficulty in communication with others using general telephone, big amplification is needed. But big amplification can occur howling as a side effect. In this study we developed the new technique of big amplification without howling, manufactured and estimated the new hearing aid telephone. Telephone speech is divided to three frequency band, amplified respectively and fitted to HIP's hearing ability. The telephone speech frequency is monitored by counter in time domain. The counter transfers the sinusoidal sound to rectangular wave using comparator and counts the number of rectangular wave in a certain time period, that is frequency, to monitor the howling. Telephone have microphone and speaker, which are fitted in a rigid structure and frequency band of telephone sound is limited, so howling occurs in the limited frequency band. If the counter notices that howling conditions happen, microprocessor decreases quickly the gain of the related frequency band. The result of test of our new hearing aid telephone showed that we can amplifiy the sound as much as 40dB, which is meaningful level to many HIP, and make HIP increase their perception ability from 20% to 60.8% in 1 syllable test and from 28.9% to 78% in 2 syllable test.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.3 no.5
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• pp.495-505
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• 2000

In this paper, we propose an efficient auto-fitting system for digital hearing-aids which automatically adjusts the fitting parameters according to the auditory characteristics of hearing handicapped person. The fitting parameters are extracted from audiogram of hearing handicapped and are applied to digital hearing-aid purposed GM3036 chip. The characteristics of each parameter are compared with those from theoretical 2cc graph. The purposed system has applied to 50 patients and their satisfaction ratios show to the very high. As results, it shows effectiveness of proposed system.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.227-232
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• 2022

Disasters are now becoming commonplace and especially the vulnerable group such as the disabled, the elderly, children and foreigners are in a state of overlapping disasters. In this situation, ATSC 3.0-based UHDTV disaster information service for the visually and hearing impaired has been developing. This study focuses on the demand data collected through in-depth interview with the impaired. The demand analysis data is very important to development process of technology. The results of the interview show that it is essential to link the UHDTV disaster signals with home-network, IoT, wearable devices, and various assistive devices for the impaired (hearing aid, smart light bulbs, warning light, etc.). In outdoor space, UHDTV disaster information must be connected to public display media, digital signage, kiosk, screens in bus or taxi. If communication aids for the visually and hearing impaired are equipped with a function that can transmit and receive disaster information, it will help to minimize disaster damage.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.732-743
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• 2007

Background noise is one of the major complaints of not only hearing impaired persons but also normal listeners. This paper describes the results of two experiments in which speech recognition performance was determined for listeners with normal hearing and sensorineural hearing loss in noise environment. First, we compared speech enhancement algorithms by evaluation speech recognition ability in various speech-to-noise ratios and types of noise. Next, speech enhancement algorithms by reducing background noise were presented and evaluated to improve speech intelligibility for sensorineural hearing impairment listeners. We tested three noise reduction methods using single-microphone, such as spectrum subtraction and companding, Wiener filter method, and maximum likelihood envelop estimation. Their responses in background noise were investigated and compared with those by the speech enhancement algorithm that presented in this paper. The methods improved speech recognition test score for the sensorineural hearing impaired listeners, but not for normal listeners. The results suggest the speech enhancement algorithm with the loudness compression can improve speech intelligibility for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.61-67
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• 2000

Recent progress in digital and VLSI technology has offered new possibility fer noticeable advance of hearing aids. Yet, environmental noise remains one of the major problems to hearing aid users. This paper describes results which speech recognition performance and speech discrimination performance was measured for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss, while listeners in speech-band noise. In addition, to ameliorate hearing-aided environments of hearing impaired listeners, environmental noise reduction using speech enhancement techniques are investigated as a front-end of conventional hearing aids. Speech enhancement techniques are implemented in a realtime system equipped with DSP board. The clinical test results suggest that the speech enhancement technique may work in synergy with gain functions fer the greater SNR improvement as the preprocessing algorithm of digital hearing aids.