Process for automatic hearing threshold determination, especially in newborns and small children

摘要

The invention concerns the objective testing of a patient's hearing, i.e. without the need for cooperation from the patient, making use of the acoustically evoked potential (AEP). The two fields of application of the method include hearing-threshold determination and audition screening. The invention calls for testing to be carried out either only on a spectral basis or on both a spectral and a time basis. Since with early AEP the signal-to-noise ratio in an individual sweep in the neighbourhood of the threshold is extremely low, statistical testing is not carried out on the basis of individual sweeps, but instead a sufficient number of sweeps (preferably 100) is averaged to give averaged potentials from which the spectra are determined. The statistical test method proposed by the invention is based on the little-known q-sample uniform scores test not yet used in the context of automatic AEP measurement. In the form described in the literature, the q-sample uniform scores test is suitable only for phase-spectrum testing, the information contained in the amplitude spectrum remaining unexploited. The invention therefore calls for the method to be modified in such a way that the amplitude information is also used in the test. The already high detection sensitivity of the q-sample uniform scores test for early AEP in the neighbourhood of the threshold is significantly improved by this modification.