Investigations of Auditory Filters Based Excitation Patterns for Assessment of Noise Induced Hearing Loss

Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) as one of the major avoidable occupational related health issues has been studied for decades. To assess NIHL, the excitation pattern (EP) has been considered as one of the mechanisms to estimate the movements of the basilar membrane (BM) in the cochlea. In this study, two auditory filters, dual resonance nonlinear (DRNL) filter and rounded-exponential (ROEX) filter are applied to create two EPs, the velocity EP and the loudness EP respectively. Two noise hazard metrics are proposed based on two EPs to evaluate hazardous levels caused by different types of noise. Moreover Gaussian noise and single-tone noise are simulated to evaluate performances of the proposed EPs and the noise metrics. The results show that both EPs can reflect the responses of the BM to different types of noise. For Gaussian noise there is a frequency shift between the velocity EP and the loudness EP. The results suggest that both EPs can be used for assessment of NIHL.