The goal of the European project TERENCE is to improve the reading skills and overall school performance of young children with hearing disabilities between 7 – 11 years of age.

Working alongside Dr. Pierpaolo Vittorini, coordinator of this European project financed by the Seventh Framework Programme, we had the opportunity to participate personally and work cooperatively in the development of medical technology.

Juan-Manuel-Corchado-Terence

We are presently developing a platform that includes hardware and software developed to measure hearing levels. The device consists of a hearing aid and a transducer that sends stimuli and returns data on the state of the cochlea, which makes it possible to determine whether the nerve is damaged.

The result is an audiometry which evaluates the ability to hear sounds through bone conduction. During the exam, various sounds are produced at different frequencies (125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1.000 Hz, 2.000 Hz, 3.000 Hz, 4.000 Hz y 8.000 Hz) and with different intensities (de 20 dB a 120 dB). Once the data have been gathered, they are represented graphically on a mobile application, facilitating the analysis of the hearing levels of that individual.

terence-01

In order to analyse the data (bearing in mind that medical care is first and foremost), it should be taken into account that the normal range that humans are able to hear, in terms of tone, is approximately 20 to 20,000 Hz (the human language is emitted at a tone between 500 and 3,000 Hz). As a precaution, in terms of intensity, sounds greater than 85 dB, which, for example, is the level at which we listen to a rock music concert, may result in a partial loss of hearing (hypoacusis) after a few hours. Sounds exceeding 120 dB may result in immediate pain or hypoacusis.

 

 

juan-manuel-corchado-terence-02

Posted by Juan M. Corchado

Juan Manuel Corchado (15 May 1971, Salamanca, Spain) is Professor at the University of Salamanca. He has been Vice-Rector for Research from 2013 to 2017 and Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Elected as Dean of the Faculty of Science twice, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He leads the renowned BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology) Research Group, created in 2000. Director of the IoT Digital Innovation Hub and President of the AIR Institute, J. M. Corchado is also Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL). J. M. Corchado has been president of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and academic coordinator of the University Institute for Research in Art and Animation Technology at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). He currently combines all his activity with the direction of Master programmes in Security, Digital Animation, Mobile Telephony, Information Systems Management, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Design and Printing, Blockchain, Z System, Industry 4.0, Agile Project Management, and Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings, at the University of Salamanca and his work as editor-in-chief of the journals ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section). J. M. Corchado mainly works on projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids and Sentiment Analysis. He has recently been included in the board of trustees of the AstraZeneca Foundation, along with other health professionals and researchers recognised for bringing scientific knowledge closer to society.

Thanks for your comment

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.