Precision Hearing Diagnostics and Augmented-hearing Technologies

Introduction

Cochlear synaptopathy (CS) is a recently discovered type of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) that compromises the integrity of the auditory-nerve population after ageing, noise exposure, or ototoxicity. This SNHL type occurs before the gold-standard clinical audiogram detects hearing problems and has functional consequences for neural sound encoding and communication in noisy environments.

Prevalence and Diagnosis

Despite its presumed high prevalence, CS is neither diagnosed nor treated in clinical practice. There is a WHO-identified need for early diagnosis and treatment of SNHL to reduce the societal and economic burden of hearing loss, and CS diagnosis falls within this category.

Diagnostic Development

In our ERC StG and PoC projects, we developed a robust, encephalogram-based diagnostic test to quantify CS in humans. Based on this test, we individualize hearing-impaired auditory models to design hearing-aid signal processing that compensates for CS. Our model-based, augmented-hearing algorithms can offer an accessible treatment to those suffering from CS and are based on a clever and versatile neural-network architecture that enables real-time sound processing.

Project Goals

In this project, we plan to implement our diagnostic CS test (TRL4) in a portable medical device and perform clinical trials with early adopters and first-point-of-contact centers to demonstrate its patient benefit and application range in a real-world clinical context (TRL5-6).

Hardware Development

Secondly, we aim to develop hardware demonstrators that embed our augmented-hearing sound processors. These real-time FPGA processors (TRL5) will be tailored for market entry in the hearable, hearing-aid, and cochlear-implant sectors.

Business Strategy

Along with consolidating our IP portfolio and setting out a business strategy, this challenge on Medical Technology and Devices will enable us to transition our proof-of-concept research discoveries to market with this project: EarDiTech: Precision Hearing Diagnostics and Augmented-hearing Technologies.