Removing Background Talker Noise for Cochlear Implant Users

Hearing Loss Clinical Trial

Official title:

Removing Background Talker Noise for Cochlear Implant Users

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04777669
• Other study ID #: SBIR01
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: Early Phase 1
• Start date: April 25, 2020
• Est. completion date: March 31, 2023

Study information

• Verified date: July 2022
• Source: York Sound Inc
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

When hearing-impaired listeners are properly aided with a hearing aid (HA) or cochlear implant (CI), they are often able to comfortably maintain a conversation in quiet environments. However, in group environments, such as a large family dinner, restaurant, or other environment where multiple people are talking simultaneously, hearing-impaired listeners have great difficulty participating in conversations and frequently withdraw or avoid the situation. As such, it would be highly beneficial to implement an algorithm into HAs or CIs to remove background talkers ("babble") from the signal to reduce listening effort for the hearing-impaired listener and allow them to converse as if they were in a quiet environment. Although HAs and CIs frequently incorporate noise reduction algorithms, these algorithms are not effective when the background is babble. The problem of removing babble involves segregating speech from speech. Hence, the spectral properties of the signal and noise are extremely similar.

Despite these challenges, we developed an algorithm to remove background babble. In the following study will test the ability of cochlear implant users to understand speech with background babble noise using our noise reduction algorithm or no noise reduction algorithm. We hypothesize that CI users will be able to understand significantly more speech in babble noise when using our algorithm.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Recruiting
• Enrollment: 100
• Est. completion date: March 31, 2023
• Est. primary completion date: March 31, 2023
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 12 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

Subjects with CIs 12 years of age and older with no diagnosis of other communicative or cognitive disorders. Subjects must have native or native-like English proficiency.

Exclusion Criteria:

No diagnosed cognitive or communicative disorders (other than hearing loss), presence of acute/chronic otitis media, useable acoustic hearing, and non-English speaking.

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Hearing Loss

Intervention

Other:
• Noise Reduction
In within subject design, listeners will have background noise removed by a noise reduction algorithm

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	New York University School of Medicine	New York	New York

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
York Sound Inc	NYU Langone Health

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Speech Recognition	The % of words correctly understood in various noisy situations will be measured	1 day