Patent ID: 6264616
Filing Date: 2001-07-24
Classification: A61B

Abstract:
A procedure for diagnosing the presence of a suspected acoustic tumor in a patient's ear comprising:(a) determining an average hearing threshold in the suspected ear;(b) determining a stacked wave V amplitude for the suspected ear by:(i) recording the patient's auditory brainstem response (ABR) to each of a plurality of auditory stimuli;(ii) constructing a plurality of derived ABRs representing cochlear responses in a plurality of respective frequency bands;(iii) temporally shifting the derived ABRs to align wave V peak amplitudes;(iv) computing a stacked ABR by summing the temporally shifted derived ABRs;(v) measuring the wave V amplitude of the stacked ABR:(c) establishing a wave V amplitude threshold as a function of average hearing threshold;(d) diagnosing likely presence of a tumor if the stacked wave V amplitude is below the threshold.