title: Blind binary masking for reverberation suppression in cochlear implants.
abstract: A monaural binary time-frequency (T-F) masking technique is proposed for suppressing reverberation. The mask is estimated for each T-F unit by extracting a variance-based feature from the reverberant signal and comparing it against an adaptive threshold. Performance of the estimated binary mask is evaluated in three moderate to relatively high reverberant conditions (T60 = 0.3, 0.6, and 0.8 s) using intelligibility listening tests with cochlear implant users. Results indicate that the proposed T-F masking technique yields significant improvements in intelligibility of reverberant speech even in relatively high reverberant conditions (T60 = 0.8 s). The improvement is hypothesized to result from the recovery of the vowel/consonant boundaries, which are severely smeared in reverberation.
authors: Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA. hazrati@utdallas.edu
authors: Oldooz
authors: O
authors: Hazrati
authors: Jaewook
authors: J
authors: Lee
authors: Philipos C
authors: PC
authors: Loizou
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D019929:Cochlear Implantation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment / Q000523:psychology*; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014732:Vibration