Abstract
Background: Identifying and treating hearing loss can help improve communication skills, which often leads to improved quality of life. Many people do not seek medical treatment and, therefore, go undiagnosed for an extended period before realizing they have hearing loss. This study presents a self-administered, low-cost, smartphone-based hearing test application (HearTest) to quantify the pure-tone hearing thresholds of a user. The HearTest application can be used with commercially available smartphone devices and an earphone with the mentioned specification. Methods: Air-conduction-based pure-tone audiometry for the smartphone application was designed and implemented to detect hearing thresholds using a traditional “10 dB down and 5 dB up” approach. Employed smartphone-earphone combination was calibrated with respect to a GSI-61 audiometer and insert earphone ER-3A to maintain clinical standards with the help of subjective testing on 20 normal-hearing (NH) participants. Results: Further subjective testing on 14 participants with NH and retesting on five participants showed that HearTest achieves high-accuracy audiogram within clinically acceptable limits (≤10 dB HL mean difference) when compared with the reference clinical audiometer. Hardware challenges and limitations in air-conduction-based hearing tests through smartphones and ways to improve their accuracy and reliability are discussed. Conclusion: The proposed smartphone application provides a simple, affordable, and reliable means for people to learn more about their hearing health without needing access to a formal clinical facility.
Highlights
Hearing loss affects 470 million people in the world and it is expected to double by the year 2050 [1]
This section compares pure-tone audiometric thresholds for human subjects measured through HearTest v1, HearTest v2, and clinical audiometry
The maximum difference of mean values among all the six frequencies was 4.64 dB hearing level (HL), which is lower than the clinical test–retest limit of 10 dB HL
Summary
Hearing loss affects 470 million people in the world and it is expected to double by the year 2050 [1]. Untreated hearing loss has a negative impact on cognitive abilities, social behavior, professional life, and memory. It has been reported that only 16%. Of physicians’ screen for hearing loss in the USA. As hearing loss can be a gradual process, it is important to identify and provide options to enhance communication or identify if another issue is at hand, such as a pathology or neurological issue. People with hearing loss wait an average of seven years before seeking help [2]. In the case of age-related hearing loss, high-frequency sounds are typically lost first due to their location in the cochlea [3]
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