Computer aided hearing assessment: Detection of eye gesture reactions as a response to the sound

Abstract

A methodology for the detection of eye gestural reactions as a response to auditory stimuli is presented in this work. A precise hearing evaluation is important to improve the quality of life of those who suffer from hearing loss. In the case of patients with cognitive decline or other communication disorders this evaluation becomes much more complicated. The audiologist needs to focus his attention on spontaneous gestural reactions that might indicate some sort of perception. The detection of this gestural reactions is sometimes imprecise and it requires a broad experience from the audiologist. To facilitate this task, we present a fully automated method that analyzes video sequences recorded during the audiometric evaluation and identifies these unconscious gestural reactions. The presented methodology achieves an accuracy of the 94.21% in the detection of these reactions to the auditory stimuli, which makes of it an interesting tool to assist the audiologists in the hearing assessment of this specific group of patients.