Training in ABR
Small acoustic tumour detection using ABR and CE-Chirp®
Description
Summary of: Don, M., Elberling, C., & Maloff, E. (2009). Input and output compensation for the cochlear traveling wave delay in wide-band ABR recordings: implications for small acoustic tumor detection. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 20(2), 99–108. https://doi.org/10.3766/jaaa.20.2.3
This paper describes how the Stacked ABR - at the output of the cochlea - attempts to compensate for the temporal dispersion of neural activation caused by the cochlear traveling wave in response to click stimulation. Compensation can also be made - at the input of the cochlea - by using a chirp stimulus. Previously it has been demonstrated that the Stacked ABR is sensitive to small tumors that are often missed by standard ABR latency measures. Because a chirp stimulus requires only a single data acquisition run, whereas the Stacked ABR requires six, the evidence justifying the use of a chirp for small tumor detection is evaluated. The sensitivity and specificity are compared of different Stacked ABRs formed by aligning the derived-band ABRs according to (1) the individual’s peak latencies, (2) the group mean latencies, and (3) the modelled latencies used to develop the chirp. Results suggest that for tumor detection with a chosen sensitivity of 95%, a relatively high specificity of 85% may be achieved with a chirp. Thus, it appears worthwhile to explore the actual use of a chirp because significantly shorter test and analysis times might be possible.
Related course: An Introduction to the CE-Chirp®
