Steering of audio input in hearing aids by eye gaze through electrooculography
Abstract
The behavior of a person during a conversation typically involves both auditory and visual attention. Visual attention implies that the person directs his/her eye gaze towards the sound target of interest, and hence the detection of the gaze may provide a steering signal for future hearing aids. Identification of the sound target of interest could be used to steer a beamformer or select a specific audio stream from a set of remote microphones. We have previously shown that in-ear electrodes can be used to identify eye gaze through electrooculography (EOG) in offline recordings. However, additional studies are needed to explore the precision and real-time feasibility of the methodology. To evaluate the methodology we performed a test with hearing-impaired subjects seated with their head fixed in front of three targets positioned at −30°, 0°, and +30° azimuth. Each target presented speech from the Danish DAT material, which was available for direct input to the hearing aid using head related transfer functions. Speech intelligibility was measured in three conditions: a reference condition without any steering, an ideal condition with steering based on an eye-tracking camera, and a condition where eye gaze was estimated from EarEOG measures to select the desired audio stream. The capabilities and limitations of the methods are discussed.
References
Fiedler, L., Obleser, J., Lunner, T., and Graversen, C. (2016). “Ear-EEG allows extraction of neural responses in challenging listening scenarios – a future technology for hearing aids?,” IEEE EMBC.
Huigen, E., Peper, A., and Grimbergen, C.A. (2002). “Investigation into the origin of the noise of surface electrodes,” Med. Biol. Eng. Comput., 40, 332-338. doi: 10.1007/BF02344216
McShefferty, D., Whitmer, W.M., and Akeroyd, M.A. (2016). “The just-meaningful difference in speech-to-noise ratio”, Trends Hear. doi: 10.1177/2331216515626570
Manabe, H., Fukumoto, M., and Yagi, T. (2013). “Conductive rubber electrodes for earphone-based eye gesture input interface,” ISWC. doi: 10.1145/2493988.2494329
Nielsen, J.B., and Dau T. (2013). “A Danish open-set speech corpus for competing-speech studies,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 135, 407-420. doi: 10.1121/1.4835935
Pedersen, E.B., and Lunner, T. (2014) “Cognitive hearing aids? Insights and Possibilities”, Mechanics of Hearing. doi: 10.1063/1.4939399
Puder, H. (2009), “Hearing aids: An overview of the state-of-the-art, challenges, and future trends of an interesting audio signal processing applications”, IEEE ISPA. doi: 10.1109/ISPA.2009.5297793
Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright* and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
*From the 2017 issue onward. The Danavox Jubilee Foundation owns the copyright of all articles published in the 1969-2015 issues. However, authors are still allowed to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
