1st International Workshop on
Challenges in Hearing Assistive Technology (CHAT-2017)

ISCA logo

Stockholm University, August 19th,
Collocated with Interspeech 2017

Proceedings now available ▸▸▸

About

One of the biggest challenges for hearing impaired listeners is understanding speech in the presence of background noise. Noise levels that are typical of everyday social situations can have a devastating impact on speech intelligibility. Inability to communicate effectively can lead to social withdrawal and isolation. Unfortunately, current hearing aid and cochlear implant technology is often ineffective in these situations. Although amplification can restore audibility, it does not compensate for the full effects of hearing loss.

The aim of this ISCA-supported workshop is to present the challenges of hearing aid signal processing to the wider speech science and speech technology communities. Recent advances in hearing aid hardware are presenting opportunities for increasingly sophisticated processing. For example, wireless communication between the hearing aid and a mobile device can allow non-latency critical computation to be freed from the low-power constraints attendant with traditional aids. These advances raise the prospect that the computationally demanding techniques employed with great success in statistical speech modelling and statistical acoustic scene analysis could soon be exploited for hearing aid processing.

We believe that new directions in hearing aid research can be inspired by bringing together speech technologists and hearing researchers. We anticipate that the workshop will stimulate a two-way conversation between the speech research community and hearing aid developers. Hearing aid developers, who are not typically represented at Interspeech, will have an opportunity to present the challenges of their industry to the speech community; the speech community will be able to present and discuss potentially transformative approaches to speech in noise processing in the presence of hearing researchers and industry experts.

Topics

Any work related to the challenges of hearing aid signal processing will be considered relevant. Particular topics of interest include, but are not limited to,

  • New directions in multimodal hearing technology
  • Models of speech intelligibility for normal and hearing impaired listeners
  • Applications of auditory scene analysis
  • Binaural technology for speech enhancement and source separation
  • Microphone and multi-microphone technology
  • Low-latency approaches to speech intelligibility enhancement
  • Statistical model-driven approaches to hearing aid processing
  • Emerging Audio-visual (AV) approaches to speech enhancement
  • Quality & Intelligibility Assessment of audio for HA/CI users

Venue

CHAT-2017 will be held in the Södra House (Room D9) on Stockholm University campus. (Square E5 on the campus map).

The campus is situated on the northern part of The Royal National City Park and is served by Stockholm’s excellent public transportation network.

Further information about the venue and local accommodation can be found on the Interspeech website.

Programme

The workshop will be a full day (9:00 am to 6:00 pm) structured around single-track oral and poster sessions and featuring two keynote talks.

Schedule

9:00 Welcome
9:10 Keynote 1 - Prof. Volker Hohmann
10:10 Oral Session O1
11:10 Poster Adverts for Session P1
11:20 Tea/Coffee Break
11:40 Poster Session P1
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Keynote 2 - Prof. Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda
15:00 Poster Adverts for Session P2
15:10 Tea/Coffee Break
15:30 Poster Session P2
16:45 Oral Session O2
17:45 Closing + Post Workshop Drinks

Keynote Talks

K.1 - Prof. Volker Hohmann [Abstract][Slides]
chair: Jon Barker
Space-aware hearing devices - Making hearing aids smarter
Medizinische Physik and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all
Universität Oldenburg, Germany
K.2 - Prof. Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda [Abstract]
chair: John Culling
Better hearing in noise with binaural prostheses inspired by the contralateral medial olivocochlear reflex
University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.

Oral Sessions

Session O1

10:10 - 11:10
chair: John Hansen

  • O1.1 Ina Kodrasi, Daniel Marquardt and Simon Doclo. "A Simulation Study on Binaural Dereverberation and Noise Reduction based on Diffuse Power Spectral Density Estimators." [Paper][Slides]
  • O1.2 Masahiro Sunohara, Chiho Haruta and Nobutaka Ono. "Low-Latency Real-Time Blind Source Separation with Binaural Directional Hearing Aids." [Paper][Slides]
  • O1.3 Mark Huckvale and Gaston Hilkhuysen. "On the Predictability of the Intelligibility of Speech to Hearing Impaired Listeners." [Paper]

Session O2

16:45 - 17:45
chair: Tao Zhang

  • O2.1 Florian Denk, Steffen Vogl, Henning Schepker, Birger Kollmeier, Matthias Blau and Simon Doclo. "The Acoustically Transparent Hearing Device: Towards Integration of Individualized Sound Equalization, Electro-Acoustic Modeling and Feedback Cancellation." [Paper][Slides]
  • O2.2 Tsuyoshi Kitamura, Tetsuya Takiguchi, Yasuo Ariki and Kiyohiro Omori. "Individuality-Preserving Speech Synthesis System for Hearing Loss Using Deep Neural Networks." [Paper]
  • O2.3 Nico Gößling, Daniel Marquardt and Simon Doclo. "Comparison of RTF Estimation Methods between a Head-Mounted Binaural Hearing Device and an External Microphone." [Paper][Slides]

Poster Sessions

Session P1

11:40 - 13:00
chair: Peter Nordqvist

  • P1.1 Hussnain Ali, Ammula Sandeep, Juliana Saba and John Hansen. "CCi-MOBILE platform for cochlear implant and hearing-aid research." [Paper]
  • P1.2 Rafael Chiea, Bernardo Murta, Gustavo Mourao, Stephan Paul, Hussnain Ali and John Hansen. "Towards a measure of the differences in cochlear implant stimulation strategies." [Paper]
  • P1.3 Nobuhiko Hiruma, Hidetochi Nakashima and Yoh-Ichi Fujisaka. "Noise suppression algorithm based on loudness management for preserving speech components." [Paper]
  • P1.4 David Hülsmeier, Mareike Buhl, Nina Wardenga, Anna Warzybok and Marc René Schädler. "Do models hear the noise? Predicting the outcome of the German matrix sentence test for subjects with normal and impaired hearing." [Paper][Poster]
  • P1.5 Amir Hussain, Jon Barker, Ricard Marxer, Ahsan Adeel, William Whitmer, Roger Watt and Peter Derleth. "Towards Multi-modal Hearing Aid Design and Evaluation in Realistic Audio-Visual Settings: Challenges and Opportunities." [Paper]
  • P1.6 Gaurav Naithani, Tom Barker, Giambattista Parascandolo, Lars Bramsløw, Niels Henrik Pontoppidan and Tuomas Virtanen. "Evaluation of the benefit of neural network based speech separation algorithms with hearing impaired listeners." [Paper]
  • P1.7 Kotoyo Nozaki, Yasuhiro Oikawa, Yusuke Ikeda, Yoh-Ichi Fujisaka and Masahiro Sunohara. "Blind Reverberation Power Estimation by Exponential Averaging with Attack-Release Time Constant for Hearing aids." [Paper]
  • P1.8 Marc René Schädler, David Hülsmeier, Mareike Buhl, Birger Kollmeier and Anna Warzybok. "Predicting the benefit of binaural noise reduction algorithms with FADE." [Paper]
  • P1.9 Hongying Yang, Xihong Wu and Jing Chen. "An iOS-based speech audiometry for self-assessment of hearing status." [Paper]
  • P1.10 Zhi Zhu, Ryota Miyauchi, Yukiko Araki and Masashi Unoki. "Important role of temporal cues in speaker identification for simulated cochlear implants." [Paper]

Session P2

15:30 - 16:45
chair: Sunohara Masahiro

  • P2.1 Ahsan Adeel, Mandar Gogate and Amir Hussain. "Towards Next-Generation Lip-Reading Driven Hearing-Aids: A preliminary Prototype Demo." [Paper]
  • P2.2 Fei Chen. "Perceptual contribution of fundamental frequency contour and its implication to assistive hearing devices for Chinese-speaking hearing-impaired users." [Paper]
  • P2.3 Hye-Seung Cho and Hyoung-Gook Kim. "Home Environmental Sound Alert System for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Users." [Paper]
  • P2.4 Mahdie Karbasi and Dorothea Kolossa. "ASR-based Measures for Microscopic Speech Intelligibility Prediction." [Paper]
  • P2.5 Ning Ma, Guy Brown, Jon Barker and Michael Stone. "Exploiting deep learning to inform spectral contrast enhancement for hearing-impaired listeners." [Paper]
  • P2.6 Kenji Ozawa, Shion Yokouchi and Masanori Morise. "Noise reduction using an eyeglass-frame microphone array based on DOA estimation by LASSO." [Paper]
  • P2.7 Raul H Sanchez, Federica Bianchi, Michal Fereczkowski, Sébastien Santurette and Torsten Dau. "Auditory profiling through computational data analysis." [Paper]
  • P2.8 Yuki Takashima, Tetsuya Takiguchi, Yasuo Ariki and Kiyohiro Omori. "Audio-Visual Speech Recognition for a Person with Severe Hearing Loss Using Deep Canonical Correlation Analysis." [Paper]
  • P2.9 Sean Wood and Jean Rouat. "Towards GCC-NMF Speech Enhancement for Hearing Assistive Devices: Reducing Latency with Asymmetric Windows." [Paper]
  • P2.10* Tom Campbell. "Ascending Subcortical Causal Informational Flow in a Person wih a Cochlear Implant"

Proceedings

The full workshop proceedings are now available for download. Click below.

CHAT proceedings

Submission

Submission is now closed.

Prospective authors are invited to submit either,

  • 1-page abstracts (poster presentation only)
  • 2-page extended abstracts (poster presentation only)
  • Full-length papers of 4-6 pages

We request that authors use the INTERSPEECH 2017 paper template available for LaTeX and MSWORD.

Papers are to be submitted using the online system.

Schedule

  • Submission opens: April 24th, 2017
  • Submission closes: June 2nd, 2017
  • Acceptance notification: July 10th, 2017
  • Camera-ready paper: July 24th, 2017
  • Workshop date: August 19, 2017

Presentation Guidelines

Oral Sessions

  • Regular talk slots will be 20 minutes including 5 minutes for questions and change over.
  • Keynote slots will be 60 minutes with 10-15 minutes for discussion.
  • Presentations will be pre-loaded onto a presentation computer.
  • Please use PowerPoint or PDF formats. (If this is a problem please contact the organiser at chat2017workshop@gmail.com.)

Poster Sessions

  • Presenters will be asked to make a 1-minute/1-slide poster pitch at the start of the poster session.
  • Please send your slide in PDF format to chat2017workshop@gmail.com before the meeting.
  • Each presenter will be allocated a poster board with a size of 95 cm wide by 190 cm high (see here).

Organizers

Workshop Co-chairs

  • Jon Barker, University of Sheffield, UK
  • John Culling, University of Cardiff, UK
  • John Hansen, University of Texas, Dallas, US
  • Amir Hussain, University of Stirling, UK
  • Peter Nordqvist, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden
  • Masahiro Sunohara, Rion Co. Ltd., Japan

Scientific Committee

  • Kathy Arehart, University of Colorado, US
  • Peter Assmann, University of Texas Dallas, US
  • Stefan Bleeck, University of Southampton, UK
  • Robert Brennan, ON Semiconductor, Canada
  • Jorg Buchholz, National Acoustic Laboratories, Australia
  • Leslie Collins, Duke University, US
  • Chris Davis, Western Sydney University, Australia
  • Peter Derleth, Sonova AG, Switzerland
  • Bas van Dijk, Cochlear, Belgium
  • Naomi Harte, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
  • Andrew Hines, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
  • Jesper Jensen, Oticon + Aalborg University, Denmark
  • Yatin Mahajan, Western Sydney University, Australia
  • Bernd T. Meyer, Johns Hopkins University, US
  • Ben Milner, University of East Anglia, UK
  • Brian Moore, University of Cambridge, UK
  • Graham Naylor, MRC IHR, University of Nottingham, UK
  • Peter Nopp, MED-EL Ltd, Austria
  • Niels Pontoppidan, Eriksholm Research Centre, Denmark
  • Bernhard Seeber, Technical University of Munich, Germany
  • Constantin Spille, University of Oldenburg, Germany
  • Bill Whitmer, MRC IHR, University of Nottingham, UK
  • Tao Zhang, Starkey Hearing Technologies, US

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Our Sponsors

The Workshop has been made possible by financial support from the UK Engineering and Physical Research Council, the UK Medical Research Council and the International Speech Communication Association.

EPSRC logo MRC logo ISCA logo