Hearing Aid Selection: Closed- versus Open-canal Fitting Hearing Aids

To select hearing aid is an essential process for successful hearing rehabilitation. The purpose of this study is to review hearing aid selection considerations between receiver in-the-canal (RIC) and custom hearing aid (CHA) in order to guide appropriate selection of the hearing aid. This study discussed three key factors in the hearing aid selection including physical, acoustic and electroacoustic characteristics and other aspects. Advantages of RIC types are comfort to wear, reduction of the occlusion effect, presence of directional microphones, on-site fit, easy connectivity with other devices, and use of rechargeable batteries. On the other hand, the CHA types have their advantage in terms of being comfort to wear with masks, proper insertion and placement, reduction of the acoustic feedback, good approximation of frequency response curve, improvement of speech in noise perception, expanded hearing aid candidacy with varying hearing thresholds, and easy telephone use. We concluded that appropriate selection of the hearing aid would contribute to successful hearing rehabilitation, if considering physical, psycho-social, and acoustical characteristics.

Temporomandibular disorders and occlusion effect on orthodontic treatment

Evidence in the literature indicates the significant association between temporomandibular joint disorders and orthodontic treatment. As a result of the epidemiological investigations that indicated the high prevalence of temporomandibular disorders among patients with malocclusions, it has been suggested that there might be a cause-and-effect correlation between both of these conditions. Evidence in the literature is inconsistent regarding the association between temporomandibular joint disorders and malocclusion, and orthodontic treatment. In the present literature review, we have discussed the different aspects of temporomandibular disorders and malocclusion and their relation to orthodontic treatment approaches. Among the different studies in the literature, solid evidence indicates a significant association between temporomandibular joint disorders and malocclusion, and accordingly, research aimed to study the impact of orthodontic treatment on curing and preventing the development of these disorders. The current evidence seems to be neutral regarding the impact of orthodontic treatment approaches on curing and preventing temporomandibular disorders. Therefore, it has been suggested that further investigations are still needed for adequate further evaluation. Finally, as we previously discussed, the attending orthodontist should adequately take care of certain parameters in these patients, including centric relation, maximal intercuspal position, simultaneous contact points, and evaluating the direction of forces applied on the relevant teeth.

Augmented Reality Vector Light Field Display with Large Viewing Distance Based on Pixelated Multilevel Blazed Gratings

Glasses-free augmented reality (AR) 3D display has attracted great interest in its ability to merge virtual 3D objects with real scenes naturally, without the aid of any wearable devices. Here we propose an AR vector light field display based on a view combiner and an off-the-shelf purchased projector. The view combiner is sparsely covered with pixelated multilevel blazed gratings (MBG) for the projection of perspective virtual images. Multi-order diffraction of the MBG is designed to increase the viewing distance and vertical viewing angle. In a 20-inch prototype, multiple sets of 16 horizontal views form a smooth parallax. The viewing distance of the 3D scene is larger than 5 m. The vertical viewing angle is 15.6°. The light efficiencies of all views are larger than 53%. We demonstrate that the displayed virtual 3D scene retains natural motion parallax and high brightness while having a consistent occlusion effect with natural objects. This research can be extended to applications in areas such as human–computer interaction, entertainment, education, and medical care.

A New Approach to Enhance Artificial Intelligence for Robot Picking System Using Auto Picking Point Annotation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been widely used in different domains such as self-driving, automated optical inspection, and detection of object locations for the robotic pick and place operations. Although the current results of using AI in the mentioned fields are good, the biggest bottleneck for AI is the need for a vast amount of data and labeling of the corresponding answers for a sufficient training. Evidentially, these efforts still require significant manpower. If the quality of the labelling is unstable, the trained AI model becomes unstable and as consequence, so do the results. To resolve this issue, the auto annotation system is proposed in this paper with methods including (1) highly realistic model generation with real texture, (2) domain randomization algorithm in the simulator to automatically generate abundant and diverse images, and (3) visibility tracking algorithm to calculate the occlusion effect objects cause on each other for different picking strategy labels. From our experiments, we will show 10,000 images can be generated per hour, each having multiple objects and each object being labelled in different classes based on their visibility. Instance segmentation AI models can also be trained with these methods to verify the gaps between performance synthetic data for training and real data for testing, indicating that even at mAP 70 the mean average precision can reach 70%!

Influencing Factors in Estimation of Leaf Angle Distribution of an Individual Tree from Terrestrial Laser Scanning Data

Leaf angle distribution (LAD) is an important attribute of forest canopy architecture and affects the solar radiation regime within the canopy. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has been increasingly used in LAD estimation. The point clouds data suffer from the occlusion effect, which leads to incomplete scanning and depends on measurement strategies such as the number of scans and scanner location. Evaluating these factors is important to understand how to improve LAD, which is still lacking. Here, we introduce an easy way of estimating the LAD using open source software. Importantly, the influence of the occlusion effect on the LAD was evaluated by combining the proposed complete point clouds (CPCs) with the simulated data of 3D tree models of Aspen, Pin Oak and White Oak. We analyzed the effects of the point density, the number of scans and the scanner height on the LAD and G-function. Results show that: (1) the CPC can be used to evaluate the TLS-based normal vector reconstruction accuracy without an occlusion effect; (2) the accuracy is slightly affected by the normal vector reconstruction method and is greatly affected by the point density and the occlusion effect. The higher the point density (with a number of points per unit leaf area of 0.2 cm−2 to 27 cm−2 tested), the better the result is; (3) the performance is more sensitive to the scanner location than the number of scans. Increasing the scanner height improves LAD estimation, which has not been seriously considered in previous studies. It is worth noting that relatively tall trees suffer from a more severe occlusion effect, which deserves further attention in further study.

Occlusion Effect in Response to Stimulation by Soft Tissue Conduction-Implications

To gain insight into the broader implications of the occlusion effect (OE—difference between unoccluded and occluded external canal thresholds), the OE in response to pure tones at 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 kHz to two bone conduction sites (mastoid and forehead) and two soft tissue conduction (STC) sites (under the chin and at the neck) were assessed. The OE was present at the soft tissue sites and at the bone conduction sites, with no statistical difference between them. The OE was significantly greater at lower frequencies, and negligible at higher frequencies. It seems that the vibrations induced in the soft tissues (STC) during stimulation at the soft tissue sites are conducted not only to the inner ear and elicit hearing, but also reach the walls of the external canal and initiate air pressures in the occluded canal which drive the tympanic membrane and excite the inner ear, leading to hearing. Use of a stethoscope by the internist to hear intrinsic body sounds (heartbeat, blood flow) serves as a clear demonstration of STC and its relation to hearing.