In order to customize how a sound processor included in a cochlear implant system operates, an audiologist may utilize a programming system to create a sound processing program and then load the sound processing program onto the sound processor. Some sound processing programs may specify how the sound processor is to process audio content and/or direct a cochlear implant included in the cochlear implant system to generate and apply electrical stimulation representative of the audio content. Other sound processing programs may be configured to facilitate measurement by the sound processor of one or more electrode impedances, performance by the sound processor of one or more neural response detection operations, and/or performance by the sound processor of one or more diagnostics procedures associated with the cochlear implant system.
Creation of a sound processing program typically involves specifying specific values for a number of different parameters associated with the sound processing program. For example, an audiologist may utilize a graphical user interface displayed by a programming system to manually adjust one or more most comfortable loudness levels (“M levels”), threshold levels (“T levels”), volume levels, sensitivity levels, and a plethora of other parameters associated with a particular sound processing program. Specifying values for so many parameters is often a time consuming and laborious task for the audiologist and patient alike.
Even though the optimal values for many parameters associated with a sound processing program are patient-specific and require patient feedback in order to properly identify, an audiologist often knows, based on prior experience with other patients, that some optimal values are going to be within a certain range. For example, if the patient is a child, the audiologist may assume that the optimal values for some parameters are going to be similar to optimal values that the audiologist has seen in other pediatric patients. Hence, when creating a sound processing program for the child, the audiologist may first adjust values for these parameters to be at or near what the audiologist believes the optimal values may be. The audiologist may then make incremental changes to the values, e.g., based on patient feedback, in order to determine what the actual optimal values really are.
Unfortunately, conventional programming systems require an audiologist to make this initial adjustment of values each time a new sound processing program is created. This is because the values always start out being equal to the same default values each time a new sound processing program is created.