Ever wish hearing aids could look more fashionable, like a pair of expensive eyeglasses? If you live in the Netherlands, you're in luck. As of last month, a commercial product is on the Dutch market that's being called a revolutionary new hearing aid device by its creators.

Varibel hearing glasses - initiated and developed at the Technical University of Delft - look like normal glasses but with a major difference. In each temple, there are four tiny microphones that catch the sound and feed these signals to a chip for real-time signal processing.

Hearing aids embedded in the frames of eyeglasses is actually nothing new. In the late 50s, Warren Keuffel had an earlier version. "They took a body aid, split it in half, attached each half on the temples, behind the ears, and connected the two halves with a wire," he recalls. Only one earmold could be attached to one side of the unit. They were very clunky but quite powerful, he says. Despite being cumbersome, "they were a godsend to an adolescent who felt very self-conscious with a hearing aid in a shirt pocket or, god forbid, a chest harness," says Keuffel.

Later models of the aids became more streamlined, about the size of a BTE aid but grafted onto glasses. Jennifer Lootens had a pair in the 70s for a couple of years. It worked fairly well for her, but she ended up hating it. Over time, she wished to have her glasses separate from her hearing aid. "When you want to take off the glasses and put on sunglasses, or just rub your eyes, you have to disconnect," says Lootens.

So what's different about this version? At the end of last century, digital processing techniques had evolved enough to make it possible to carry out digital signal processing. According to Varibel, the sound processors are state-of-the-art, the rechargeable batteries and power supply are optimized, the directivity of the sound is better, and the models look good and are modern. Several models are available, with four colors for men and women.

When asked why this particular form was chosen, a representative from Varibel said, "To achieve a sufficient directivity index, we need a substantial array for the four microphones in each 'arm.' The higher the array length, the more directivity. In glasses, this length is far longer than in traditional hearing devices."

Varibel's product literature says that the signal processing amplifies sound that comes from the front - i.e. the direction where the wearer looks at it - and it attenuates sound from the side and back. "This is an enormous advantage in circumstances when the speech intelligibility is bad due to surrounding noise sources as in noisy environments. It is the bad speech intelligibility under noisy circumstances that is one of the main problems of the conventional hearing aids, and this problem has been solved now," the literature says.

Conventional directional HAs often use only two microphones that have to be placed close together, because they must fit in the HA. They usually don't show a directivity index (DI) higher than 3 dB. The hearing glasses, however, give a DI of 8 dB. A study found that 90 percent of respondents rate Varibel as better than a fairly current HA in noisy rooms.

These hearing glasses support moderate to severe hearing loss. There's no concrete timing available for introduction in the U.S. yet, and it depends on the market success and limitations of production in the first countries where it is introduced. Later this year, it will be available in one or two other countries in Europe. In the Netherlands, it costs 3,300 Euro (about $4,200), which includes the price of multi-focus prescription lenses. The price level in the U.S. market is not yet defined. What is also yet to be determined is whether you can get them in a 50s horn-rimmed style.

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