Separate inner and outer hair cell loss compensation

摘要

A method and device for compensating sensorineural hearing loss in a manner that allows dysfunction of the inner and outer hair cells to be separately compensated is described. The disclosed techniques involve providing separately adjustable compression pathways for the received sound.

主权项

1. A method for compressively amplifying an audio signal, comprising:
inputting the audio signal to a fast signal level estimator (fast SLE) having a fast low-pass filter characterized by a rise time constant and a decay time constant; inputting the audio signal to a slow signal level estimator (slow SLE) having a slow low-pass filter characterized by a rise time constant and a decay time constant; subtracting the output of the slow SLE from the output of the fast SLE and inputting the result to a fast level-to-gain transformer; inputting the output of the slow SLE to a slow level-to-gain transformer, wherein the slow level-to-gain transformer is characterized by expansion when the output of the slow SLE is below a specified threshold; and, amplifying the audio signal with a gain adjusted by a summation of the outputs of the fast level-to-gain transformer and the slow level-to-gain transformer, wherein the output of the fast level-to-gain transformer is multiplied by a weighting factor computed as a function of the output of the slow SLE before being summed with the output of the slow level-to-gain transformer.