프레임 기반의 포먼트 강조에 의한 음향 마스킹 현상 발생에 대한 연구

전유용,김규성,이상민,Jeon, Yu-Yong,Kim, Kyu-Sung,Lee, Sang-Min 대한의용생체공학회 2009 의공학회지 Vol.30 No.6

One of the characteristics of the hearing impaired is that their frequency selectivity is poorer than that of the normal hearing. To compensate this, formant enhancement algorithms and spectral contrast enhancement algorithms have been developed. However in some cases, these algorithms fail to improve the frequency selectivity of the hearing impaired. One of the reasons is the acoustic masking among enhanced formants. In this study, we tried to enhance the formants based on the individual masking characteristic of each subject. The masking characteristic used in this study was minimum level difference (MLD) between the first formant to the second formant while acoustic masking was occurred. If the level difference between the two formants in each frame is larger than the MLD, the gain of the first formant was decreased to reduce the acoustic masking that occurred among formants. As a result of the speech discrimination test, using formant enhanced speeches, speech discrimination score (SDS) of the speeches having differently enhanced formants was significantly superior to SDS of the speeches having equally enhanced formants. It means that suppression of the acoustic masking among formants improve frequency selectivity of the hearing impaired.

디지털 보청기에서의 포먼트 강조에 의한 마스킹 효과 연구

전유용(Yuyong Jeon),길세기(Se-kee Kil),윤광섭(Kwang-sub Yoon),이상민(Sangmin Lee) 대한전자공학회 2008 電子工學會論文誌-SC (System and control) Vol.45 No.5

청력 손실을 보상하고 난청인이 다른 사람들과 대화할 수 있도록 디지털 보청기 알고리즘은 개발 되어 왔음에도 불구하고, 디지털 보청기 사용자들은 음성을 듣는데 어려움이 있다고 불만을 토로한다. 그 이유는 피드백이나 잔여 노이즈 등에 의해 디지털 보청기를 통한 음성의 질이 이해하기에 불충분하기 때문이다. 또 다른 이유로 포먼트들 사이에서 일어나는 마스킹 현상이 될 수 있다. 이 연구에서 정상 청각 피험자와 노인성 난청을 갖고 있는 난청인 피험자의 마스킹 특성을 측정하여 음성에서의 마스킹에 의한 음성 인지 저하를 확인하기 위한 실험을 하였다. 실험은 순음검사, 어음 청취 역치 검사, 낱말 분별력 검사, 순음 마스킹 검사, 어음 마스킹 검사의 5개 테스트로 이루어졌다. 어음 마스킹 검사에서 각각 어음 세트에 25개의 어음이 사용되었다. 각 어음의 왜곡을 객관적으로 평가하기 위해서 log likelihood ratio (LLR)를 도입하였다. 결과적으로 포먼트 향상의 양을 늘리면 늘릴수록 어음 인지는 낮아졌고, 각 어음 세트에서 각각의 향상된 어음은 통계적으로 비슷한 LLR을 갖지만 어음인지는 그렇지 않게 나타났다. 이것은 왜곡이 아닌 음향 마스킹이 어음 인지에 영향을 준다는 것을 의미한다. 실제로 피험자들 대부분이 맞추지 못한 음성을 주파수 분석한 결과 첫 번째와 두 번째 포먼트 사이의 레벨 차이가 약 35dB이며 이는 순음 마스킹 실험 결과(정상 청각 피험자:36.36dB, 난청인 피험자:32.86dB)와 비슷한 양상을 보였다. 실험 결과에서 볼 수 있듯이 음향마스킹의 특성은 정상 청각인과 난청인 사이에서 다르게 나타난다. 그렇기 때문에 보청기 착용 전 마스킹 특성을 검사하고, 피팅 시에 적용해야 한다. Although digital hearing aid algorithms have been developed to compensate hearing loss and to help hearing impaired people to communicate with others, digital hearing aid user still complain about difficulty of hearing the speech. The reason could be the quality of speech through digital hearing aid is insufficient to understand the speech caused by feedback, residual noise and etc. And another thing is masking effect among formants that makes sound quality low. In this study, we measured the masking characteristics of normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners having presbyacusis to confirm masking effect in speech itself. The experiment is composed of 5 tests; pure tone test, speech reception threshold (SRT) test, word recognition score (WRS) test, puretone masking test and speech masking test. In speech masking test, there are 25 speeches in each speech set. And log likelihood ratio (LLR) is introduced to evaluate the distortion of each speech objectively. As a result, the speech perception became lower by increasing the quantity of formant enhancement. And each enhanced speech in a speech set has statistically similar LLR, however speech perception is not. It means that acoustic masking effect rather than distortion influences speech perception. In actuality, according to the result of frequency analysis of the speech that people can not answer correctly, level difference between first formant and second formant is about 35dB, and it is similar to result of pure tone masking test(normal hearing subject:36.36dB, hearing impaired subject:32.86dB). Characteristics of masking effect is not similar between normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners. So it is required to check the characteristics of masking effect before wearing a hearing aid and to apply this characteristics to fitting.

인간의 심리음향 특성을 이용한 잡음 제거 및 음성 향상 알고리즘

전유용(Yuyong Jeon),송영록(Youngrok Song),황세미(Hwan Semi),박규석(Kyuseok Park),안홍섭(Hongsub An),이상민(Sangmin Lee) 한국HCI학회 2011 한국HCI학회 학술대회 Vol.2011 No.1

보청기에서 음성 대비 강조에 의해 발생할 수 있는 마스킹 현상

전유용(Y. Y. Jeon),양동권(D. G. Yang),방동혁(D. H. Bang),길세기(S. K. Kil),이상민(S. M. Lee) 한국재활복지공학회 2007 재활복지공학회논문지 Vol.1 No.1

심리음향 특성을 이용한 음성 향상 알고리즘

전유용(Yuyong Jeon),이상민(Sangmin Lee) 대한전기학회 2010 전기학회논문지 Vol.59 No.6

In the speech system, for example hearing aid as well as speech communication, speech quality is degraded by environmental noise. In this study, to enhance the speech quality which is degraded by environmental speech, we proposed an algorithm to reduce the noise and reinforce the speech. The minima controlled recursive averaging (MCRA) algorithm is used to estimate the noise spectrum and spectral weighting factor is used to reduce the noise. And partial masking effect which is one of the human hearing properties is introduced to reinforce the speech. Then we compared the waveform, spectrogram, Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) and segmental Signal to Noise Ratio (segSNR) between original speech, noisy speech, noise reduced speech and enhanced speech by proposed method. As a result, enhanced speech by proposed method is reinforced in high frequency which is degraded by noise, and PESQ, segSNR is enhanced. It means that the speech quality is enhanced.

말운동장애인을 위한 시-청각 단서 제공 읽기 훈련 프로그램 개발

방동혁,전유용,양동권,길세기,권미선,이상민,Bang, D.H.,Jeon, Y.Y.,Yang, D.G.,Kil, S.K.,Kwon, M.S.,Lee, S.M. 대한의용생체공학회 2008 의공학회지 Vol.29 No.4

In this paper, we developed a visual-auditory cue software for reading training of motor speech disorder patients. Motor speech disorder patients can use the visual and/or auditory cues for reading training and improving their symptom. The software provides some sentences with visual-auditory cues. Our sentences used for reading training are adequately comprised on modulation training according to a professional advice in speech therapy field. To ameliorate reading skills we developed two algorithms, first one is automatically searching the starting time of speech spoken by patients and the other one is removing auditory-cue from the recorded speech that recorded at the same time. The searching of speech starting time was experimented by 10 sentences per 6 subjects in four kinds of noisy environments thus the results is that $7.042{\pm}8.99[ms]$ error was detected. The experiment of the cancellation algorithm of auditory-cue was executed from 6 subjects with 1 syllable speech. The result takes improved the speech recognition rate $25{\pm}9.547[%]$ between before and after cancellation of auditory-cue in speech. User satisfaction index of the developed program was estimated as good.

CIC형 보청기용 범용 이어쉘 제작을 위한 파라미터 추출 및 시뮬레이션

에르덴바야르,전유용,박규석,송영록,이상민,U, Erdenebayar.,Jeon, Y.Y.,Park, G.S.,Song, Y.R.,Lee, S.M. 대한의용생체공학회 2010 의공학회지 Vol.31 No.4

Most of the ear shells of hearing aids are manufactured manually, and it is one of the reasons that the cost of the custom-made hearing aids can be increased. Thus it is required to manufacture the ready-made ear shell for the purpose of easy manufacturing and decrease in cost. In this study, we extract parameters in order to manufacture the ready-made ear shell for CIC type hearing aids and simulate to reconstruct the ear shell using the extracted parameters. To parameter extraction, we set up the eleven parameters for the ready-made ear shell based on anatomical characteristics of the ear canal, and we found values of the parameters from twenty-one impressions in their 20s and twelve impressions in their 60s using aperture detection and feature detection algorithms. Classifying the parameters by size, we also determine the parameters of ready-made ear shell into three types for people in their 20s and two types for people in their 60s. Each ready-made ear shell was simulated to reconstruct using figured parameters, and evaluated the rate of agreement with unused impressions for setting parameters. To evaluate the ready-made ear shell, we calculate the volume ratio and intersection between of the each impression and ready-made ear shell, and the intersection ratio using the intersection volume and ready-made ear shell volume. As a result, the volume ratio was about 70%, and volume match ratio was also up to 70%. It means that the ready-made ear shell we simulated is the significantly matched to impression.

자동이득 조절에서 해제시간에 따른 어음인지점수 변화

황세미,전유용,박헌진,송영록,이상민,Hwang, S.M.,Jeon, Y.Y.,Park, H.J.,Song, Y.R.,Lee, S.M. 대한의용생체공학회 2010 의공학회지 Vol.31 No.5

Automatic gain control(AGC) is used in hearing aids to compensate for the hearing level as to reduced dynamic range. AGC is consisted of the main 4 factors which are compression threshold, compression ratio, attack time, and release time. This study especially focus on each individual need for optimum release time parameters that can be changed within 7 certain range such as 12, 64, 128, 512, 2094, and 4096ms. To estimate the effect of various release time in AGC, twelve normal hearing and twelve hearing impaired listeners are participated. The stimuli are used by one syllable and sentence which have the same acoustic energy respectively. Then, each of score of the word recognition score is checked in quiet and noise conditions. As a result, it is verified that most people have the different best recognition score on specific release time. Also, if hearing aids is set by the optimum release time in each person, it is helpful in speech recognition and discrimination.

뉴로-퍼지를 이용한 스펙클 제거

길세기,전유용,오형석,서촌민박,권장우,이상민,Kil, Se-Kee,Jeon, Yu-Yong,Oh, Hyung-Seok,Nishimura, Toshihiro,Kwon, Jang-Woo,Lee, Sang-Min 한국전기전자학회 2008 전기전자학회논문지 Vol.12 No.3

Medical ultrasound has benefits in mobility and safety than any other medical techniques such as X-ray, CT and MRI but has speckle noise which decrease the ability of an observer to distinguish the fine details in diagnostic examination. But simple removing of speckle often causes losing boundary information. Then, in this paper, we presented a novel neuro-fuzzy method which could remove speckle efficiently without loss of boundary information. Proposed method consists of image clustering by fuzzy algorithm and image processingby neural networks which was learned by back propagation. From the experiments for simulation image and real ultrasound image, we could verify the proposed method. 의용 초음파 장비는 X-Ray, CT, MRI 등 다른 의료 장비보다 휴대성과 안전성면에서는 장점이 있지만 진단 시 해상도와 화질 저하를 유발하는 스펙클이 생기는 단점이 있다. 그러나 단순한 스펙클 잡음의 제거는 경계선 정보의 손실을 발생시킬 수도 있다. 이에 본 논문에서는 효과적인 스펙클 제거와 손실 없는 경계선 검출을 위해 뉴럴네트워크와 퍼지 클러스터링을 이용한 뉴로-퍼지 스펙클 제거 방법을 제안하였다. 제안된 방법은 입력된 의용 초음파 영상에 대해 먼저 퍼지 클러스터링을 적용하여 세 영역으로 나누고 이후 각 영역별로 별도의 뉴럴 네트워크를 적용하는 방법이다. 실제 실험 및 기존 방법들과의 정성적?정량적 비교 분석을 통해 제안 방법의 유용성을 검증하였다.

난청인의 난청 정도에 따른 비대칭 청각 필터 구현의 객관적 평가

주상익(S. I. Joo),전유용(Y. Y. Jeon),송영록(Y. R. Song),이상민(S. M. Lee) 한국재활복지공학회 2009 재활복지공학회논문지 Vol.3 No.1

난청인의 청력 손실은 개인별로 다양하므로 기존의 대칭적으로 주파수 밴드별 청각 필터를 구현하는 방법은 다양한 형태의 난청인의 청력 손실을 적절하게 모사해주지 못한다. 각 중심주파수와 음성의 입력크기에 따라 청각 필터의 형태가 비대칭적으로 바뀌고 청력손실이 있는 난청인은 청력 손실에 따라 청각필터의 형태가 정상인들과는 다른 형태로 바뀌게 되며 음질에도 차이가 있다. 본 연구에서는 난청인의 난청 정도에 따라 변하는 비대칭 청각 특성을 잘 반영한 청각필터를 구현하여 몇 가지 실험을 통해 각 구현된 청각 필터의 성능을 객관적으로 평가하였다. 실험은 구현된 청각 필터를 통한 음성의 perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ)와 log likelihood ratio (LLR)를 사용하였으며 그 값을 통해 처리된 음성의 객관적인 음질과 왜곡정도를 평가 하였다. 청력 손실을 주었을 때 대칭과 비대칭 청각 필터사이의 PESQ와 LLR 값을 실험해 본 결과 청각 필터 간의 큰 차이를 보였다. 위 실험 결과들로 대칭과 비대칭 청각 필터의 형태에 따라서 음성의 음질에 영향을 받는다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 특히, 난청이 있을 때 중심 주파수별 청각 필터의 비대칭적 형태 변화가 난청인이 받아들이는 음질에 영향이 있었다. Hearing impaired person s hearing loss has personally various shape, so existing symmetrical auditory filter of frequency band method wasn"t properly simulated the hearing impaired person"s various hearing loss shape. The shapes of auditory filter are asymmetrical different with each center frequency and each input level. Hearing impaired person which has hearing loss was differently changed with that of normal hearing people and it has different value for speech of quality through auditory filter. In this study, the asymmetrical auditory filter was simulated and then some tests to estimate the filter"s performance objectively were performed. The experiment as simulated auditory filter"s performance evaluation method used perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and log likelihood ratio (LLR) for speech through auditory filter. In the test, processed speech was evaluated objective speech quality and distortion using PESQ and LLR value. When hearing loss processed, PESQ and LLR value have big difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical auditory filter. It means that the difference of the shape auditory filter may affect to speech quality. Especially, when hearing loss existed, auditory filter changing according to asymmetrical shape for each center frequency affected to perceive speech quality of the hearing impaired.