PEAK IDENTIFICATION OF AUDITORY BRAIN-STEM RESPONSES WITH MULTIFILTERS AND ATTRIBUTED AUTOMATON

An attributed automaton, a special case of attribute grammar, is a fle xible tool in pattern recognition. It allows the utilization of contex tual information from previously analyzed patterns in the analysis of the current pattern, and offers the possibility of describing those st ructural characteristics of patterns which cannot be described by clas sic methods of syntactic pattern recognition. Auditory brainstem respo nses are routinely used in audiology and otoneurology. Many studies on using the spectral analysis of averaged auditory brainstem responses have described at least two frequency bands, corresponding to the slow and fast components. Selective non-recursive digital filters for each frequency band in the spectrum of the auditory brainstem response hav e revealed enhancement or attenuation of components, depending on the band. In this study, multifilters and an attributed automaton were com bined for the identification of peaks.