System and method for personalized, image analysis based positioning of hearing aids

A system for determining hearing aid positioning correctness with respect to the unique anatomy of a specific user's ear, the system comprising a processing logic configured to:

• request a hearing aid user to capture a plurality of images, the plurality of images comprising at least one frontal face image and at least one side face image, wherein the plurality of images is captured while the user is wearing a hearing aid;
• process the plurality of images to determine the position of at least one anatomical landmark of the user's ear and of one or more parts of the hearing aid, wherein the processing comprises applying a facial landmark algorithm on the plurality of images to identify a position of an ear of the user, at least one anatomical landmark of the ear and one or more parts of the hearing aid;
• deriving, from the determined position of the at least one anatomical landmark of the ear of the user and from one or more parts of the hearing aid, one or more features related to a relative position of the hearing aid relative to the at least one anatomical landmark of the ear of the user in the plurality of images;
• determine the correctness of a position of the hearing aid by applying a machine learning algorithm on the one or more derived features, wherein the machine learning algorithm is trained using a training set comprising a large plurality of images of ears with hearing aids and a plurality of labels associated with the large plurality of images, each label indicating whether the hearing aid is correctly or incorrectly positioned, wherein the large plurality of images comprises images of ears of different subjects and wherein the large plurality of images comprises at least two images of each ear from different angles thereof;
• wherein the machine algorithm is trained to differentiate between the following scenarios:
• a) the hearing aid is correctly positioned;
• b) the hearing aid is incorrectly positioned;
• and
• c) a structural element of the hearing aid needs to be changed;
• provide an indication to the user regarding the correctness of the hearing aid position, wherein if the hearing aid is correctly positioned, the indication is indicative of same;
• wherein if incorrect positioning is identified, the indication comprises a request to reposition the hearing aid, or
• wherein if changing of a structural element of the hearing aid is required, the indication comprises a request to change the structural element.

A computer implemented method for determining hearing aid position correctness with respect to the unique anatomy of a specific user's ear, the method comprising:

• requesting, via a user interface, a hearing aid user to capture and/or upload a plurality of images, the plurality of images comprising at least one frontal face image and at least one side face image, wherein the plurality of images is captured while the user is wearing a hearing aid,
• applying a facial landmark algorithm on the plurality of images to identify a position of an ear of the user, at least one anatomical landmark of the ear and one or more parts of the hearing aid;
• deriving, from the determined position of the at least one anatomical landmark of the ear of the user and from the one or more parts of the hearing aid, one or more features related to a relative position of the hearing aid relative to the at least one anatomical landmark of the ear of the user in the plurality of images;
• determining the correctness of a position of the hearing aid by applying a machine learning algorithm on the one or more features, wherein the machine learning algorithm is trained using a training set comprising a large plurality of images of ears with hearing aids and a plurality of labels associated with the large plurality of images, each label indicating whether the hearing aid is correctly or incorrectly positioned, wherein the large plurality of images comprises images of ears of different subjects and wherein the large plurality of images comprises at least two images of each ear from different angles thereof;
• wherein the machine algorithm is trained to identify whether a structural element of the hearing aid needs to be changed in order to achieve a correct fit of the hearing aid to the unique anatomy of the user's ear;
• wherein if changing of a structural element of the hearing aid is required, the algorithm is configured to identify which structural element needs to be changed, and to provide a request to the user to change the identified structural element.