Intrauterine Acoustics Embedded Active Noise Controller

Abstract

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.

Development and application of audio-integrated ANC system for infant incubators

“…27 for canceling impulse-like noise in infant incubators; the computer simulation of the ANC system integrated with intrauterine sounds while canceling the unwanted noise was presented in Ref. 28; the preliminary real-time experiment of the ANC system was given in Ref. 29; the multi-channel ANC systems were proposed in Refs.…”

“…Furthermore, most passive techniques either occupy limited incubator space or block the view of the infant to caregivers, or both. These difficulties motivated the development of active noise control (ANC) systems 25,26 to cancel the low-frequency noise inside the incubators [27][28][29][30] . A nonlinear active noise control algorithm was proposed in Ref.…”

Application of multi-channel hybrid active noise control systems for infant incubators

“…Most attempts have focused on reducing staff activities [13][14][15][16][17][18] , and/or incorporating sound containment and absorption strategies into the design of incubators and NICUs. The limit of passive noise control methods for incubators motivated the development of active noise control systems 19 to cancel the low-frequency noise for incubators [20][21][22][23][24][25][26] . The nonlinear ANC algorithm was proposed in Refs.…”

“…The noise sources for infant incubator are shown in Table 1. Existing ANC systems developed for infant incubators are based on feedforward algorithms that use the reference sensors placed outside the incubator to pick up the outside noise [20][21][22][23][24][25][26] . Therefore, it can effectively reduce the noise generated from sources outside the enclosure.…”

A combined sonic crystal rod of Bragg type with ability of vibration reduction in broad frequency band

“…Those methods block the view of incubator and are also ineffective for low-frequency NICU noises [16][17][18] . The limit of passive noise control methods for incubator noise motivated the development of active noise control (ANC) systems 19 to cancel the low-frequency noise inside the incubators [20][21][22][23][24][25] . The nonlinear active noise control algorithm was proposed in Ref.…”