Interacoustics Research Unit:
Shaping the solutions of tomorrow

Advancing audiology

Interacoustics has an ambition to advance the field of audiology and to explore new technology and innovative solutions.

The mission of the Interacoustics Research Unit (IRU) – located at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) – is to translate basic advances in audiology and hearing science into solving real world challenges faced by audiologists, ENTs, and hearing healthcare professionals.

Strong collaboration across the world

IRU is affiliated with DTU’s Hearing Systems Group (Centre for Applied Hearing Research; Oticon Centre of Excellence for Hearing and Speech Sciences). Overall, by collaborating with universities and experts in the field and incorporating feedback from hearing care professionals, Interacoustics can ensure that its products and services remain relevant and effective in meeting the evolving needs of the industry.

With research partners, we gain access to a broad geographic and demographic variety of patient populations. This allows us to test new methods and measurements in the actual target population.

Current and past collaboration partners

Research activities

We established the Interacoustics Research Unit in 2013 to work on open research projects in the field of technical audiology. IRU’s focus is on applied and clinical projects in audiometry, electrophysiology, hearing aid fitting, and impedance.

“The Interacoustics Research Unit’s purpose is to improve the quality of life for people with hearing problems. Some projects contribute to that by investigating grand innovative ideas with the potential to change clinical practice, while other projects are more incremental in their nature, such as new and Improved detection algorithms and new insights into the mechanics of hearing. So we contribute at many different levels”

– Søren Laugesen, Ph.D., Research Manager at IRU.

Experience the diagnostic topics of tomorrow

Hearing in noise

For more than a century, hearing aids have mostly been fitted based on hearing threshold data, as measured by the audiogram. Together with their partners, IRU has developed a novel diagnostic test for identifying people’s ability to hear in noise and create a better foundation for their hearing aid fitting.

Machine learning

Besides looking for clinical pains that we can help to solve, we are also monitoring what’s going on in the research world to seek inspiration for new projects. One of the big hot topics is machine learning, which IRU is beginning to investigate , e.g., together with Ph.D. students. You can find one of these projects in the link below.

Improved fitting in infants

A core theme for IRU is to improve validations of fittings in infants that are too young for behavioral hearing testing. In collaboration with the University of Manchester, IRU has investigated a new method - the Aided Cortical test - to validate hearing aids in infants that are 3 to 7 months of age.

Interacoustics Research Unit: Shaping the solutions of tomorrow