Electrical audio signal processing systems and devices – Hearing aids – electrical – Specified casing or housing
Reexamination Certificate
2001-11-26
2004-03-16
Kuntz, Curtis (Department: 2643)
Electrical audio signal processing systems and devices
Hearing aids, electrical
Specified casing or housing
C704S271000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06707921
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to a hearing aid, and more particularly to a hearing aid for selectively providing sound to a user.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Hearing impairment or loss is a problem suffered by many people. Hearing problems may be congenital or may be due to injury or disease, exposure to damaging sound levels, aging, etc.
A common approach to hearing problems is the use of a hearing aid. Hearing aids mechanically pick up sound, convert it into an electronic signal, amplify the signal, and convert it back to sound which is applied to the ear of the user. In this manner, a higher sound level is provided directly into the ear canal of a user of the hearing aid. The user therefore can partially mitigate hearing problems.
A drawback of prior art hearing aids is that they not only pick up and amplify desired sounds, but they also pick up and amplify noise. Noise is almost always present, whether in the foreground or background. If the noise is strong enough, it can interfere with or drown out the desired sound. As a result, prior art hearing aids in some situations provide too much amplified noise to the user. Unfortunately, another drawback of a prior art hearing aid is that it continuously provides sound to the user, and cannot discriminate between desired sound and undesired sound. The prior art hearing aid does not give the user any guidance between background noise and speech. The user therefore must differentiate between noise and speech. In the prior art, the user must typically watch the lip movement of a speaker in order to determine when to listen to the output of the hearing aid and when to ignore the output.
Therefore, there remains a need in the art for improvements in hearing aids.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A hearing aid comprises an image sensing device, a sound input transducer, a sound output transducer, and a processor. The image sensing device detects an image from a selected region of a user of the hearing aid while the sound input transducer receives sound and produces an audio signal representative of the sound. The sound output transducer receives the audio signal and converts the audio signal to a sound wave that is provided to the user. The processor receives the image, analyzes the image to determine an existence of human-generated sound, and provides the audio signal from the sound input transducer to the sound output transducer when human-generated sound is detected. The audio signal is provided at a first level when human-generated sound is detected and is provided at a second level in an absence of human-generated sound.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4757541 (1988-07-01), Beadles
patent: 4975960 (1990-12-01), Petajan
patent: 5680481 (1997-10-01), Prasad et al.
patent: 5806036 (1998-09-01), Stork
patent: 6377925 (2002-04-01), Greene et al.
patent: 2002/0103649 (2002-08-01), Basson et al.
Cosatto, E., et al., 2000. “Audio-Visual Unit Selection for the Synthesis of Photo-Realistic Talking-Heads,” IEEE (4 pages).
Elenius, K., and Traven, H., 1993. “Multi-Layer Perceptrons and Probabilistic Neural Networks for Phoneme Recognition,” In: Proc. Eurospeech 1993 3rd European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1237-1240.
Basu, S., et al., 1998. “3D Modeling and Tracking of Human Lip Motions,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, Bombay, India, pp. 337-343.
Leung, W.H., et al., 2000. “Realistic Video Avatar,” IEEE (4 pages).
McAllister, D., et al., 1998. “Automated Lip-Sync Animation as a Telecommunications Aid for the Hearing Impaired,” 1998 IEEE 4th Workshop on Interactive Voice Technology for Telecommunications Applications (6 pages).
Melek, Z., and Akarun, L., 2000. “Automated Lip Synchronized Speech Driven Facial Animation,” IEEE (2 pages).
Noh., J., and Neumann, U., 2000. “Talking Faces,” IEEE (4 pages).
Reveret, L., and Benoit, C., 1998. “A New 3D Lip Model for Analysis and Synthesis of Lip Motion in Speech Production,” Proc. of the Second ESCA Workshop on Audio-Visual Speech Processing, AVSP 1998 (6 pages).
Stork, D.G., and Hennecke, M.E., 1996. “Speechreading by Humans and Machines, Models, Systems and Applications,” Accoustics Bulletin, vol. 22, #3, May-Jun., 1997, p. 30.
Stork, D.G., and Hennecke, M.E., 1996. “Speechreading: An overview of image processing, feature extraction, sensory integration and pattern recognition techniques,” Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, pp. xvi-xxvi.
“Lipsynch: Phoneme examples,” Mar. 27, 1998, Hash Animation Master; available on website: http://www.geocities.com/-gcmartin/phoneme_examples.html (5 pages).
“Phonemic and Phonetic: Orthographic Differences That Make a Difference,” Centre for Linguistics, Univ. of Western Australia; available on website: www.arts.uwa.edu.au/LingWWW/LIN101-2001/NOTES-101/phoneme.html (7 pages).
Ensey Brian
Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP.
Kuntz Curtis
LandOfFree
Use of mouth position and mouth movement to filter noise... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Use of mouth position and mouth movement to filter noise..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Use of mouth position and mouth movement to filter noise... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3271365