Automated detection of morphology changes in ABR waves in normal hearing using an intelligent algorithm

Introduction In daily practice, measurements of auditory brainstem responses (ABR) are used to objectively assess the hearing ability. The basic neural activity of the patient"s brain interferes with the evoked potentials resulting in a low signal-to-noise ratio. Up to 2000 stimuli are applied and the corresponding results are averaged to enable a visual annotation of the potentials. The potentials are divided into characteristic waves. At present it is not possible to automatically distinguish normal outcomes from anomalous results, as there are no clear boundaries to pathological conditions.