Hiroshi Sato

Background/Objectives: Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) is essential for maintaining quality of life (QOL) and independence in older adults. Still, its implementation is labor-intensive and difficult to sustain in aging societies such as Japan. Digital technologies may enable continuous, scalable CGA in daily living environments. This study aimed to develop and preliminarily evaluate a digital CGA (D-CGA) framework by integrating data from multiple monitoring devices, as a preparatory step toward Artificial Intelligence (AI)-supported personalized care planning. Methods: Four devices (Handy, Apple Watch, Withings Sleep, and Vieureka) were selected. Due to ethical constraints in Japan, a pilot study was conducted with graduate students. Participants underwent continuous monitoring for five weekdays. Common and device-specific measurement items were extracted, visualized, and compared across devices. Heart rate data were examined using correlation-based analyses. Baseline CGA was conducted before monitoring. Results: Distributional and temporal characteristics of physiological measures were explored separately for daytime and nocturnal periods. Continuous heart rate and respiratory rate data were successfully collected across monitoring days, demonstrating the feasibility of real-life data acquisition using the selected devices. Heart and respiratory rates showed distinct distributional patterns between daytime and nocturnal periods, supporting context-specific physiological characterization. Conclusions: This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of integrating multi-device data for D-CGA and provides foundational reference data for future studies of older adults. The results support the potential of D-CGA to inform personalized care and guide subsequent large-scale and clinical investigations.

Noise sensitivity is a factor that determines how an individual perceives how uncomfortable a sound is, and noise sensitivity is believed to affect the annoyance response to floor impact noise in dwellings. In this study, we conducted a survey using the Weinstein Noise Sensitivity Scale given to subjects who participated in an evaluation of annoyance to floor impact noise and investigated the relationship with the results of the annoyance judgments. As with previous research, it is predicted that the reaction to annoyance to floor impact sound varies greatly depending on the listener’s noise sensitivity and that a reaction of “annoy” is more likely to occur in the high sensitivity group, while a “annoy” judgment is less likely to occur in the low sensitivity group.

An on-site system for measuring low-frequency noise and complainant's responses to the low-frequency noise was developed to confirm whether the complainant suffer from the environmental noise with low-frequency components. The system suggests several methods to find the dominant frequency and major sound pressure level spectrum of the noise causing annoyance. This method can also yield a quantified relationship (correlation coefficient and percentage of response to the noise) between physical noise properties and the complainant’s responses. The advantage of this system is that it can easily find the relationship between the complainant’s response to the acoustic event of the houses and the physical characteristics of the low-frequency noise, such as the time trends and frequency characteristics. This paper describes the developed system and provides an example of the measurement results.

This study investigated the relation between annoyance and single-number quantities to rate heavy-weight floor impact sound insulation. Laboratory experiments were conducted to evaluate the subjective response of annoyance resulting from heavy-weight floor impact sounds recorded in wooden houses. Stimuli had two typical spectra and their modified versions, which simulate the precise change in frequency response resulting from insulation treatments. Results of the first experiment showed that the Zwicker’s percentile loudness (N5) was the quantity to rate most well annoyance of heavy-weight impact sound over a wide sound level range. The second experiment revealed that arithmetic average (LiFavg,Fmax) of octave-band sound pressure levels measured using the time constant “fast” and Zwicker’s percentile loudness (N5) much better described annoyance by the precise change in the sound spectrum attributable to insulation treatments than Japanese standardized single-number quantities (Li,Fmax,r, LiA,Fmax, and Li,Fmax,Aw) do. Japanese standardized single-number quantities using the A-weighting curve as a rating curve were found to be excessively influenced by the 63 Hz octave-band sound level and have the great sound level-dependences in the relation with subjective ratings.

Hearing thresholds for low-frequency complex tones were measured to investigate effects of intensity and frequency differences between components and effects of the number of components on the detection of complexes. Complex tones comprised two tones, geometrically centered at 60 Hz, with frequency differences of 30, 60, 90, or 120 Hz. Sound pressure levels of the two tones were set to equal intensity or to equal sensation level. Additional threshold measurements were conducted for complex tones comprising 2–6 components at 25–145 Hz. A complex signal with multiple tones was detectable even if the levels of individual components were below the threshold. The improvement of complex signal detection varied greatly with the level difference and number of tones. Threshold levels for complex tones (in terms of level per component) decreased as the number of tones increased. Complex tones whose components have mutually similar frequencies were more detectable than those with separated components.

The hearing threshold for low frequency (LF) tones was measured in a pressure field to investigate the effects of ageing on hearing sensitivity. Participants were young adults around 20 years old and older adults over 60. Measurement results showed that the older listeners had a higher threshold, on average, than the young listeners. The difference of median thresholds between these two groups was about 10 dB at every measurement frequency. Furthermore, hearing abnormalities other than age-related hearing loss showed no great effect upon the LF thresholds. Comparison of LF thresholds and audiograms (i.e. mid and high frequency hearing) of the older listeners revealed only moderate correlation between them. These results suggest that older people retain good hearing sensitivity in the LF region, in contrast to their often-degraded sensitivity at higher frequencies. Therefore, in LF noise evaluation, we should carefully regard the possibility that older listeners can perceive a low level LF noise.

When measurement of reverberation time is done in a test chamber to evaluate acoustical property of materials, spatial averaging of reverberation time should be done. Using microphone rotator is recognized as one of the tool to do spatial averaging. This study compares between three methods of spatial averaging of reverberation times measured in small rectangular test chamber (3m x 4m x 5m). The first method is averaging reverberation time measured at 5 of fixed position used as standard positions for testing, the second is at 72 fixed positions on the circle of microphone rotator, and the third is with microphone rotator (64 s/rotation). The result of comparison between three method revels that reverberation time measured by rotating microphone has more scatter than and presents different reverberation time from those measured by other method especially at lower frequency bands. Simulation of microphone rotation with the decay curves measured at 72 fixed positions suggests that spatial distribution of steady state sound pressure level, rotation speed of microphone, and reverberation time of test chamber are key factors of errors. As a conclusion, the strict guideline for measurement of reverberation time with microphone rotator should be presented to minimize errors.