Investigation into the uniqueness of neonate transient otoacoustic emissions

This work presents initial findings from an investigation into the use of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) for identifying individuals. A data set of 2009 neonate transient otoacoustic emissions was quantified for uniqueness using the Euclidean distance separation of the power spectra. Each sample was compared to all the others and the minimum separation recorded. The percentage separation for 50%, 95%, and 99% of the sample set was calcu- lated and the distribution of the minimum separation plotted. The minimum separation between samples was 1.84% while 99% of the samples had a sepa- ration of 3.68%. A simple technique was able to achieve a separation of 3.68% for 99% of the data set, indicating it is highly likely that otoacoustic emissions are unique to an individual and of potential use as a biometric variable in an identification system.