Patent ID: 7141022

Claim:
A diagnostic method for detecting a hearing anomaly wherein a patient's auditory brainstem response (ABR) to each of a plurality of auditory stimuli is recorded and wherein a plurality of derived-band ABRs representing cochlear responses in a plurality of respective frequency bands are constructed, the method comprising: (a) temporally aligning the derived-band ABRs by: (i) fitting each of the derived-band ABRs to a respective linear equation; (ii) subtracting the linear equation from the respective derived-band ABR to obtain a detrended derived-band ABR; (iii) calculating an integral function for each of the detrended derived-band ABRs; (iv) identifying a peak in each of the integral functions; (v) calculating a respective peak displacement value for each of the integral functions; (vi) shifting each of the detrended derived-band ABRs by the respective displacement value; (b) summing the shifted detrended derived-band ABRs and comparing the sum to a threshold value to detect a hearing anomaly.