Wakayama University, Wakayama, Japan.
RION Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
Ear Hear. 2019 Jan/Feb;40(1):55-62. doi: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000000590.
The temporal modulation transfer function (TMTF) has been proposed to estimate the temporal resolution abilities of listeners with normal hearing and listeners with hearing loss. The TMTF data of patients would be useful for clinical diagnosis and for adjusting the hearing instruments at clinical and fitting sites. However, practical application is precluded by the long measurement time of the conventional method, which requires several measurement points. This article presents a new method to measure the TMTF that requires only two measurement points.
Experiments were performed to estimate the TMTF of normal listeners and listeners with hearing loss to demonstrate that the two-point method can estimate the TMTF parameter and the conventional method. Sixteen normal hearing and 21 subjects with hearing loss participated, and the difference between the estimated TMTF parameters and measurement time were compared.
The TMTF parameters (the peak sensitivity Lps and cutoff frequency fcutoff) estimated by the conventional and two-point methods showed significantly high correlations: the correlation coefficient for Lps was 0.91 (t(45) = 14.3; p < 10) and that for fcutoff was 0.89 (t(45) = 13.2; p < 10). There were no fixed and proportional biases. Therefore, the estimated values were in good agreement. Moreover, there was no systematic bias depending on the subject's profile. The measurement time of the two-point method was approximately 10 min, which is approximately one-third that of the conventional method.
The two-point method enables the introduction of TMTF measurement in clinical diagnosis.
时变调制传递函数（TMTF）已被提出，用于评估正常听力和听力损失患者的时间分辨率能力。患者的 TMTF 数据对于临床诊断以及在临床和适配场所调整听力仪器非常有用。然而，由于传统方法需要多个测量点，因此其测量时间较长，限制了其实际应用。本文提出了一种仅需两个测量点的 TMTF 测量新方法。
进行了实验以估计正常听力和听力损失患者的 TMTF，以证明两点法可以估计 TMTF 参数和传统方法。共有 16 名正常听力和 21 名听力损失患者参与了实验，比较了估计的 TMTF 参数与测量时间之间的差异。
传统和两点法估计的 TMTF 参数（峰值灵敏度 Lps 和截止频率 fcutoff）显示出高度相关性：Lps 的相关系数为 0.91（t(45) = 14.3；p < 10），fcutoff 的相关系数为 0.89（t(45) = 13.2；p < 10）。没有固定和比例偏差。因此，估计值非常吻合。此外，不存在取决于患者特征的系统偏差。两点法的测量时间约为 10 分钟，大约是传统方法的三分之一。
两点法可以将 TMTF 测量引入临床诊断。
