Method of speech conversion in a cochlear implant

A cochlear implant comprising an electrode array of a plurality of electrodes configured to be arranged within a cochlea, each of the plurality of electrodes corresponding to one of a plurality channels, an electrical stimulation pulse module configured to generate electrical stimulation pulses corresponding to sound sampled via a microphone and to transmit the pulses to the electrodes, whereby the acoustic sense of a user is reinforced by transmitting the sound information to the cochlea as electrical stimulation pulses, the cochlear implant further comprising:

• a channel information adding means for adding an information of each channel corresponding to each frequency band, to the sound information after discriminating the sound information into respective frequency bands using a plurality of band pass filters within a signal frame of a predetermined sampling period, to generate a sound information comprising a combination of channel information, time information and signal level information, represented as an amplitude-time matrix (ATM);
• an in-channel stimulation frequency adjusting means for adjusting the number of the stimulation pulses to a frequency allowed in each channel in relation to said maximum value by leaving within a time interval within each channel, only a sound information having a highest signal level, so that the other sound information within the time interval within each respective channel is abandoned;
• an inter-channel stimulation frequency adjusting means for adjusting the number of the stimulation pulses to a frequency allowed in all channels by leaving, for a given time interval for all channels, only a sound information having the highest signal level of the sound information left in all channels, so that the other sound information in said all channels is abandoned;
• and
• a stimulation pulse generating means for converting the remaining sound information having the combination of ATM to the stimulation pulse and providing the stimulation pulse to the electrodes corresponding to the respective channels.

A cochlear implant comprising an electrode array of a plurality of electrodes configured to be arranged within a cochlea, each of the electrodes corresponding to one of a plurality channels, electrical stimulation pulse module configured to generate electrical stimulation pulses corresponding to sound sampled via a microphone and to transmit the pulses to the electrodes, whereby the acoustic sense of a user is reinforced by transmitting the sound information to the cochlea as electrical stimulation pulses, the cochlear implant further comprising:

• a channel information adding module configured to correlate the sound information into respective frequency bands using a plurality of band pass filters within a signal frame of a predetermined sampling period and to add an information of a channel corresponding to the frequency band to the sound information to generate a sound information comprising a combination of channel information, time information and signal level information, represented as an amplitude-time matrix (ATM);
• an in-channel stimulation frequency adjusting module configured to limit the number of the stimulation pulses to a frequency allowed in each channel, in relation to said maximum value by leaving, within a time interval within each channel, only a sound information having a highest signal level, so that the other sound information within the time interval within each channel is abandoned;
• an inter-channel stimulation frequency adjusting module configured to limit the number of the stimulation pulses to a frequency allowed in all the channels by leaving, for a given time interval for all channels, only a sound information having the highest signal level of the sound information left in all channels, so that the other sound information in said all channels is abandoned;
• and
• a stimulation pulse generating module configured to convert the remaining sound information having the combination of ATM into stimulation pulses and providing the stimulation pulses to the electrodes corresponding to the respective channels.