Cochlear implant system with an improved selection of temporal features for which to be coded into stimulation pulses

Abstract

The aspect of the disclosure is achieved by a cochlear implant system which comprises a microphone unit configured to receive an acoustical signal and transmit an audio signal based on the acoustical signal and an electrode array comprising a plurality of electrodes. Furthermore, the system comprises a processor unit including a filter bank which includes multiple bandpass channels configured to divide the audio signal into multiple bandpass audio signals. Each of the multiple bandpass channel may be confined to an electrode of the plurality of electrodes. Furthermore, the system may comprise a first temporal feature extractor configured to determine a primary group of temporal features of a bandpass audio signal of the multiple bandpass audio signals, and a second temporal feature extractor configured to window filter the bandpass audio signal and determine a secondary group of temporal features of the window filtered bandpass audio signal. The system further comprises a stimulation generator configured to determine a final group of temporal features based on the primary group of temporal features and the secondary group of temporal features, and a similarity measure value of the primary and the secondary group of temporal features is determined for the final group of temporal features. The processor unit is configured to decide based on the similarity measure value whether the final group of temporal features is to be encoded into a stimulation pulse or to prioritize based on the similarity measure value a stimulation pulse encoded based on the final group of temporal features, and wherein the encoded stimulation pulse is transferred to an electrode of the plurality of electrodes, and where the electrode is configured to apply an electrical stimulation to a group of auditory nerve fibers of a recipient of the cochlear implant system based on the encoded stimulation pulse.