Data and materials from: "Towards Auditory Profile-based Hearing-aid Fitting: Fitting Rationale and Pilot Evaluation"

This repository contains materials and data used and described in: <strong>Sanchez-Lopez, R., Fereczkowski, M., Santurette, S., Dau, T., Neher, T. (2021). Towards Auditory Profile-based Hearing-aid Fitting: Fitting Rationale and Pilot Evaluation. <em>Audiol. Res.</em> 11, no. 1: 10-21. https://doi.org/10.3390/audiolres11010002 </strong> <strong>Abstract</strong> <strong>Background</strong> - The clinical characterization of hearing deficits for hearing-aid fitting purposes is typically based on the pure-tone audiogram only. In a previous study, a group of hearing-impaired listeners completed a comprehensive test battery designed to tap into different dimensions of hearing abilities. A data-driven analysis of the data yielded four clinically relevant patient subpopulations or “auditory profiles”. The purpose of the current study was to propose and pilot-test profile-based hearing-aid settings to explore their potential for providing more targeted hearing-aid treatment.<br> <strong>Methods </strong>- Four candidate hearing-aid settings were developed and evaluated by a subset of the participants tested previously. The evaluation consisted of multi-comparison preference ratings carried out in realistic sound scenarios.<br> <strong>Results </strong>- Listeners belonging to the different auditory profiles showed different patterns of preference for the tested hearing-aid settings that were largely consistent with the expectations.<br> <strong>Conclusion</strong> - The results of this pilot evaluation support further investigations into stratified, profile-based hearing-aid fitting with wearable hearing aids. Please cite this article when using the data <strong>Description of the files:</strong> <strong>APBHAF_Audiofiles.zip: </strong>Audio files used in the SenseLabOnline environment. Each folder corresponds to one participant. <strong>APBHAF_MUSHA.xlsx: </strong>Raw Data of the MUSHA experiment. <strong>APBHAF_MUSHA_Analysis.R: </strong>R code for the data analysis. <strong>MUS_SoundScenes.mat</strong>: Mat file with a structure 1x9 MUS with the raw acoustic signals before processing with the hearing-aid simulator. CurrentMixture: matrix consisting of the simulated acoustic signal recorded by the 4 microphones of the hearing-aid satellites: 1) front-left, 2) back-left, 3) front-right, 4) back-right. CurrentAnchor: matrix consisting of the simulated acoustic signal recorded by the 4 microphones of the hearing-aid satellites: 1) front-left, 2) back-left, 3) front-right, 4) back-right. The Anchor is -6 dB SNR. SampleLabel: Either "Kantine", "Traffic" or "Quiet" ConditionLabel: Either "Cond1", "Cond2" or "Cond3" fsmix: sampling frequency. For all signals must be 32000Hz <strong>MUSHA_Instruction: </strong>Instructions used for explaining the task and the environment. * The participant IDs in each of the files has been assigned randomly to ensure the anonymization of the data. The pseudo-anonymized data might be shared under request by direct correspondence with the authors.