Environment-adaptive speech enhancement for bilateral cochlear implants using a single processor.

A computationally efficient speech enhancement pipeline in noisy environments based on a single-processor implementation is developed for utilization in bilateral cochlear implant systems. A two-channel joint objective function is defined and a closed form solution is obtained based on the weighted-Euclidean distortion measure. The computational efficiency and no need for synchronization aspects of this pipeline make it a suitable solution for real-time deployment.

Adding real-time noise suppression capability to the cochlear implant PDA research platform.

This paper presents the real-time implementation of an environment-adaptive noise suppression algorithm on an FDA-approved PDA platform for cochlear implant studies. This added capability involves identifying the background noise environment in real-time and adapting a data-driven noise suppression approach to that noise environment on-the-fly. Various software optimization steps are taken in order to achieve a real-time throughput on the PDA platform involving both the speech decomposition and the adaptive noise suppression components.

Real-time automatic tuning of noise suppression algorithms for cochlear implant applications.

The performance of cochlear implants deteriorates in noisy environments compared to quiet conditions. This paper presents an adaptive cochlear implant system, which is capable of classifying the background noise environment in real time for the purpose of adjusting or tuning its noise suppression algorithm to that environment. The tuning is done automatically with no user intervention.

Real-time automatic switching between noise suppression algorithms for deployment in cochlear implants.

Cochlear implant patients often complain about their difficulty in understanding speech in noisy environments. Currently a fixed noise suppression algorithm is used in cochlear implants regardless of the characteristics of the speech or noise environment. Access to an intelligent mechanism to determine the noise environment on-the-fly in order to automatically switch between different noise suppression algorithms in real-time can enhance patients experience with cochlear implants.

A recursive wavelet-based strategy for real-time cochlear implant speech processing on PDA platforms.

This paper presents a wavelet-based speech coding strategy for cochlear implants. In addition, it describes the real-time implementation of this strategy on a personal digital assistant (PDA) platform. Three wavelet packet decomposition tree structures are considered and their performance in terms of computational complexity, spectral leakage, fixed-point accuracy, and real-time processing are compared to other commonly used strategies in cochlear implants.

On the Design of a Flexible Stimulator for Animal Studies in Auditory Prostheses.

The present paper describes the design of two stimulators (bench-top and portable) which can be used for animal studies in cochlear implants. The bench-top stimulator is controlled by a high-speed digital output board manufactured by National Instruments and is electrically isolated. The portable stimulator is controlled by a personal digital assistant (PDA) and is based on a custom interface board that communicates with the signal processor in the PDA through the secure digital IO (SDIO) slot.