Auditory Model Optimization with Wavegram-CNN and Acoustic Parameter Models for Nonintrusive Speech Intelligibility Prediction in Hearing Aids

Nonintrusive speech intelligibility (SI) prediction is essential for evaluating many speech technology applications, including hearing aid development. In this study, several factors related to hearing perception are investigated to predict SI. In the proposed method, we integrated a physiological auditory model from two ears (binaural EarModel), wavegram-CNN model and acoustic parameter model. The refined EarModel does not require clean speech as input (blind method). In EarModel, the perception caused by hearing loss is simulated based on audio-grams. Meanwhile, the wavegram-CNN and acoustic parameter models represent the factors related to the speech spectrum and acoustics, respectively. The proposed method is evaluated based on the scenario from the 1st Clarity Prediction Challenge (CPC1). The results show that the proposed method outperforms the intrusive baseline MBSTOI and HASPI methods in terms of the Pearson coefficient
$(\rho)$
, RMSE, and
$R^{2}$
score in both closed-set and open-set tracks. Based on the results from listener-wise evaluation results, the average
$\rho$
could be improved by more than 0.3 using the proposed method.