Measuring stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions using swept tones.

Although stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions (SFOAEs) offer compelling advantages as noninvasive probes of cochlear function, they remain underutilized compared to other evoked emission types, such as distortion-products (DPOAEs), whose measurement methods are less complex and time-consuming. Motivated by similar advances in the measurement of DPOAEs, this paper develops and characterizes a more efficient SFOAE measurement paradigm based on swept tones. In contrast to standard SFOAE measurement methods, in which the emissions are measured in the sinusoidal steady-state using discrete tones of well defined frequency, the swept-tone method sweeps rapidly across frequency (typically at rates of 1 Hz/ms or greater) using a chirp-like stimulus. Measurements obtained using both swept- and discrete-tone methods in an interleaved suppression paradigm demonstrate that the two methods of measuring SFOAEs yield nearly equivalent results, the differences between them being comparable to the run-to-run variability encountered using either method alone. The match appears robust to variations in measurement parameters, such as sweep rate and direction. The near equivalence of the SFOAEs obtained using the two measurement methods enables the interpretation of swept-tone SFOAEs within existing theoretical frameworks. Furthermore, the data demonstrate that SFOAE phase-gradient delays-including their large and irregular fluctuations across frequency-reflect actual physical time delays at different frequencies, showing that the physical emission latency, not merely the phase gradient, is inherently irregular.