Improved Stereo Separation for bilateral bone-anchored hearing aids V1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improved Stereo Separation for bilateral bone-anchored hearing aids
IRAS ID
319750
Contact name
John F. Culling
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 28 days
Research summary
The goal of the study is to determine whether transfer functions for attenuation across the skull are measurable in patients with bilateral bone-anchored hearing aids (BAHAs) and if these transfer functions can be used to create a filter which will cancel crosstalk between the two BAHAs. It will take place at the Queen Elizabeth, University Hospitals Birmingham. The study will aim to recruit up to 30 participants, although we only plan to test 4-5, with bilateral conductive-sensorineural hearing loss who have have previously been implanted with percutaneous abutments for BAHAs. We will attach bone vibrators to these abutments in order to present controlled sounds. Participants will be played 2 identical pure tones, one to each side. They will change the phase and level of one of the tones to lateralise the sound to the target side of the head. The resulting data will be used to create a crosstalk-cancellation filter. Using the filter, a masked threshold task will be administered to test for improved stereo separation. The hypothesis expects that it will be possible to measure transfer functions and once a crosstalk filter is applied tone-in-noise thresholds will be improved.
REC name
London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/LO/0294
Date of REC Opinion
5 Jun 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion