Excessive noise in neo-natal care units and inside incubators can have a number of detrimental effects on an infant's health. This paper presents a novel, audio-integrated approach to achieving active noise control (ANC) for infant incubators. This paper also presents the implementation of the robust, nonlinear filtered-X least mean M-estimate algorithm, for reducing impulsive interference in incubators. The healthcare application is further enhanced by integrating the "womb effect", i.e., by using intrauterine and maternal heart sounds, proven to be beneficial to infant health, for masking the residual noise. A computer model for audio-integrated noise cancellation utilizing experimentally measured transfer functions is developed for simulations using real medical equipment noise.Index Terms -Adaptive noise control, infant incubators, least mean M-estimate algorithm, womb effect, nonlinear adaptive algorithm.
Excessive noise in neonatal care units and inside incubators can have a number of detrimental effects on an infant's health. We proposed a novel, audio-integrated approach to achieve active noise control (ANC) for infant incubators. We also presented the implementation of the robust, nonlinear filtered-X least mean M-estimate algorithm, for reducing impulsive interference in incubators. The healthcare application is further enhanced by integrating the “womb effect”, that is, by using intrauterine and maternal heart sounds, proven to be beneficial to infant health, for soothing the infant and masking the residual noise. A computer model for audio-integrated noise cancellation utilizing experimentally measured transfer functions is developed for simulations using real medical equipment noise. The simulation of the audio integrated ANC system produced optimal results and the system was further validated by real-time experiments to be robust and efficient.
This paper presents a pioneering healthcare application of active noise control (ANC) -the intrauterine acoustics embedded ANC system for reducing noise levels inside infant incubators in neonatal intensive care units. Incorporating intrauterine audio with incubators has proven medical benefits. However it is necessary to develop an ANC system to optimize the benefits of the integration. A computer model utilizing measured transfer functions from an experimental setup is developed for simulations using real medical equipment noise. An average cancellation of 16 dB was observed. The simulation of the audio integrated ANC system produced optimal results and the system was validated to be robust and efficient.
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