Stimulus frequency otoacoustic emissions evoked by swept tones

• We use swept tones to evoke the stimulus frequency otoacoustic emissions (SFOAEs).
• The swept-tone SFOAEs can be successively measured in human ears with normal hearings.
• The swept-tone SFOAEs can be consistently reproduced in repeated measures.
• The swept-tone SFOAEs are nearly equivalent to SFOAEs evoked by pure tones.
• The method of swept-tone SFOAEs could be useful in developing a more efficient tool of hearing loss screening in the clinic.

Otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) are soft sounds generated by the cochlea and the measurements of OAEs are useful in detecting cochlear damages. Stimulus frequency otoacoustic emissions (SFOAEs) are evoked by one single tone and they are the most frequency specific in probing functional status of the cochlea than other types of OAEs. However, SFOAEs are currently restricted to research only because of the difficulty and low efficiency of their measurements. To solve these problems, an efficient method of using swept tones to measure SFOAEs was proposed in this study. The swept tones had time-varying frequencies and therefore could efficiently measure SFOAEs over a wide frequency range with a resolution dependent on the sweep rate. A three-interval paradigm and a tracking filter were used to separate the swept-tone SFOAEs from background noises. The reliability of the swept-tone SFOAEs was examined by a repeated-measure design, and the accuracy was evaluated by the comparison with a standard method using pure tones as the stimuli. The pilot results of this study showed that SFOAEs could be measured successfully using swept tones in human ears with normal hearing. The amplitude and phase of the swept-tone SFOAEs were highly reproducible in the repeated measures, and were nearly equivalent to SFOAEs evoked by pure tones under various signal conditions. These findings suggest that the proposed swept-tone SFOAEs could be a useful method in estimating the cochlear functions and developing an efficient approach of OAE measurements to help with accurate hearing diagnoses in the clinic.

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