Objective detection of auditory evoked potentials. Comparison of several statistical tests in the frequency domain on...

A fully objective electric response audiometry (ERA) requires an objective response detection by an appropriate statistical test. The Rayleigh test, Watson's U2 test, Kuiper's test and Hodges-Ajne's test check the phase angle distribution of a Fourier harmonics. The modified Rayleigh test uses, in addition to the phase angles, the amplitude information in the form of the ranks of the spectral amplitudes, whereas magnitude-squared coherence (MSC) uses the spectral amplitudes themselves. The signal detection performance of these six tests was judged on the basis of a sample of near-threshold click-evoked ABR. MSC was found to be the best suited test out of the six tests investigated, but the performance differences to the modified Rayleigh test (and even to the unmodified Rayleigh test), and to Watson's test as well were only slight. Hodges-Ajne's test and Kuiper's test have the lowest sensitivity and the mean time required for response detection is longest for Hodges-Ajne's test.