Automated hearing impairment diagnosis using machine-learning: An open-source software development undergraduate research project

Abstract

Approximately 700 million people will have disabling hearing loss by 2050. Underdeveloped and developing countries, which encompass a considerable proportion of people with disabling hearing impairment, have a sparse number of audiologists and otolaryngologists. The lack of specialists leaves most hearing impairments undiagnosed for a long time, resulting in negative societal and economic impacts. In this article, we propose an automated hearing impairment diagnosis software—based on machine learning—to support audiologists and otolaryngologists in accurately and efficiently diagnosing and classifying hearing loss. We present the design, implementation, and performance analysis of an open-source automated hearing impairment diagnosis software, which consists of two modules: a hearing test data-generation module and a machine-learning model. The data-generation module produces a diverse and exhaustive data set for training and evaluating the machine-learning model. By employing multiclass and ultilabel classification techniques to learn from the hearing test data, the model can swiftly predict the type, degree, and configuration of hearing loss with high reliability. Our proposed machine-learning model demonstrates promising results with a prediction time of 634 ms, a log-loss reduction rate of 0.9848 and accuracy, precision, recall, and f1-score of 1.0000—showing the model's applicability to assist audiologists and otolaryngologists in rapidly and accurately classifying the type, degree, and configuration of hearing loss. In addition to the technical contributions, this article also highlights the importance of involving undergraduate students in open-source software development projects which have a direct impact on improving the quality of human life.