Preserving Wideband Tympanometry Information With Artifact Mitigation.

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Acoustics

Background:

• Wideband tympanometry (WBT) measures middle and inner ear mechanics, aiding in diagnosing ear pathologies.
• Measurement noise can create artifacts in WBT absorbance, obscuring diagnostic details and increasing variability.
• Existing smoothing methods alter true absorbance, potentially destroying critical narrow-band frequency characteristics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify the causes of artifacts in WBT absorbance measurements.
• To develop an artifact mitigation technique that preserves diagnostic information.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of the new mitigation procedure.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a Research Platform for the Interacoustics Titan device to analyze raw WBT data.
• Investigated WBT measurements from normal and pathological ears to identify noise and artifacts.
• Developed and applied an artifact mitigation procedure involving a high-pass filter and Tukey window.

Main Results:

• Identified intermittent low-frequency noise as a significant contributor to WBT absorbance artifacts.
• The developed artifact mitigation procedure effectively resolved artifacts from noise.
• Preserved narrow-band absorbance characteristics in both normal and pathological ears.
• Reduced intermeasurement variability in WBT absorbance.

Conclusions:

• The novel artifact mitigation technique removes noise-induced artifacts without altering diagnostic frequency response characteristics.
• Unlike smoothing, this method preserves critical narrow-band peaks and notches essential for pathology identification.
• Improved test-retest reliability of WBT measurements due to reduced intermeasurement variability.