Reliability Evaluation of a Portable Active Noise Control-Integrated Audiometer for Clinical Hearing Assessment

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Public Health

Background:

• Hearing loss is a significant global health issue.
• Pure-tone audiometry is the standard for hearing assessment but requires specialized facilities.
• Resource-limited settings face challenges in accessing conventional audiology services.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a portable audiometry system (E200) with active noise control (ANC) for improved accessibility.
• To assess the performance of the E200 system against gold-standard clinical audiometry.

Main Methods:

• A two-phase study involving 183 volunteers for calibration and 114 participants with otologic conditions for validity testing.
• Reference equivalent threshold sound pressure level calibration and comparison with conventional pure-tone audiometry.
• Analysis of 1596 data sets across 7 frequencies per ear from 114 participants.

Main Results:

• The E200 system demonstrated equivalence to conventional audiometry within a ±5 dB margin across all tested frequencies.
• Pure-tone average (PTA) results from E200 showed good agreement with traditional methods, as indicated by Bland-Altman plots and Cohen's κ statistics.
• Classification of hearing loss severity using WHO criteria aligned between the E200 and conventional testing.

Conclusions:

• The ANC-integrated portable audiometer (E200) shows potential for effective hearing screening outside of traditional sound-proof environments.
• Further research is needed to establish the long-term clinical utility and practical applications of this portable audiometry system.