Adaptive filter based two-probe noise suppression system for transient evoked otoacoustic emission detection

Transient otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) is a method widely used in clinical practice for assessment of hearing quality. The main problem in TEOAE detection is its much lower level than the level of environmental and biological noise. While the environmental noise level can be controlled, the biological noise can be only reduced by appropriate signal processing. This paper presents a new two-probe preprocessing TEOAE system for suppression of the biological noise by adaptive filtering. The system records biological noises in both ears and applies a specific adaptive filtering approach for suppression of biological noise in the ear canal with TEOAE. The adaptive filtering approach includes robust sign error LMS algorithm, stimuli response summation according to the derived non-linear response (DNLR) technique, subtraction of the estimated TEOAE signal and residual noise suppression. The proposed TEOAE detection system is tested by three quality measures: signal-to-noise ratio (S/N), reproducibility of TEOAE, and measurement time. The maximal TEOAE detection improvement is dependent on the coherence function between biological noise in left and right ears. The experimental results show maximal improvement of 7 dB in S/N, improvement in reproducibility near 40% and reduction in duration of TEOAE measurement of over 30%.