What this atlas is for

Pure-tone audiometry is the foundation of clinical hearing assessment. From a handful of threshold measurements it tells you how much a person can hear, at which pitches, and — when air and bone conduction are compared — where in the auditory system the problem lies. This atlas teaches that skill from first principles: the anatomy behind each measurement, the technique that produces a reliable audiogram, the special tests that refine a diagnosis, and the disease patterns you will meet in clinic.

How to use it

Every page adapts to your experience. The reading-level control in the sidebar offers three settings, and content appears or stays hidden according to the level you choose.

Foundation — the core ideas, in plain language. Suitable for medical students and anyone new to audiometry.
Trainee — adds method detail, numbers and the reasoning behind each step. Aimed at ENT, neurology and audiology trainees.
Clinician — adds site-of-lesion reasoning, pitfalls and the finer points of interpretation.

Trainee Throughout the atlas, claims that rest on published evidence carry a small superscript number. That number links to the References page, where the full citation is listed. The atlas favours primary sources — peer-reviewed journals, recognised textbooks and the relevant measurement standards — over secondary summaries.

The shape of what follows

The Foundations modules build the audiogram from the ground up: the anatomy of hearing, how a test is performed and calibrated, and how to read the finished chart. The Special Tests modules — masking, the Short Increment Sensitivity Index, and tone decay — show how to make a measurement trustworthy and how to localise a lesion. The Disease Patterns modules then walk through the audiometric signatures of the conditions you will diagnose, and the Tools bring the simulators, comparison views and practice trainers together in one place.

Clinician A recurring theme worth flagging early: the audiogram is necessary but rarely sufficient. It localises a loss to the conductive or sensorineural compartment and quantifies it, but separating cochlear from retrocochlear pathology, or one cochlear disease from another, almost always needs the special-test battery, the history, and often imaging. The atlas keeps returning to that point because it is where audiometric reasoning most often goes wrong.

A note on scope

This is a teaching resource, not a clinical reference. It is deliberately concise and pattern-focused. Where a topic has genuine controversy or where practice varies between standards and centres, the atlas says so rather than presenting one approach as settled.