Estimation of harmonic frequencies for hearing implant sound coding using active contour models

A system for generating electrode stimulation signals of a cochlear implant to electrode contacts in an implantable cochlear implant electrode array, the system comprising:

• an implantable electrode array having a plurality of electrode contacts;
• a preprocessor filter bank configured to process an input sound signal to generate a plurality of band pass signals, each band pass signal representing an associated band of audio frequencies and having a characteristic amplitude;
• a spectrogram module configured to generate a spectrogram representative of frequency spectrum present in the input sound signal;
• an envelope detector configured to extract a characteristic envelope signal for each band pass signal based on its amplitude;
• an active contour model module configured to:
• i. apply an active contour model to the spectrogram to estimate dominant frequencies present in the spectrogram, and
• ii. using the estimate of dominant frequencies to generate stimulation timing signals for the input sound signal;
• and
• a pulse generator configured to produce and apply the electrode stimulation signals to each electrode contact so as to stimulate the auditory nerve tissue, the electrode stimulation signals based on the envelope signals and the stimulation timing signals.