Acoustic stimulation on the round window for active middle ear implants

Many clinical reports have discussed the effectiveness of stimulating the ear's round window (RW) with a tool to mitigate conductive and mixed hearing loss. The RW is one of the two openings from the middle ear into the inner ear. Various methods have been proposed to construct a highly efficie...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers in biology and medicine 2018-06, Vol.97, p.171-177
Main Authors: Seong, Kiwoong, Lee, Kyuyup, Puria, Sunil, Cho, Jin-Ho
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic impedance
Acoustic stimulation
Acoustic Stimulation - instrumentation
Acoustics
Aged, 80 and over
Bone mass
Bones
Cadaveric experiments
Cochlea
Confined spaces
Ear
Ear canal
Efficiency
Equipment Design
Experiments
Floating structures
Hearing aids
Hearing loss
Humans
Impedance
Implants
Inner ear
LDV
Male
Middle Aged
Middle ear
Ossicular Prosthesis
Pressure
Round window
Round Window, Ear - physiology
Sound pressure
Stapes - physiology
Stapes velocity
Stimulation
Temporal Bone - physiology
Transducers
Velocity
Vibration
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Many clinical reports have discussed the effectiveness of stimulating the ear's round window (RW) with a tool to mitigate conductive and mixed hearing loss. The RW is one of the two openings from the middle ear into the inner ear. Various methods have been proposed to construct a highly efficient, easily implanted, and reliable RW transducer. Devices, however, such as floating mass transducers, have difficulty establishing proper contact without some degree of bone incision around the RW. Additionally, vibration energy may not be fully transmitted to the cochlea, but instead will be spread through the soft tissue around the transducer. We propose a more direct RW stimulation with very high acoustical impedance using a receiver that is a volume velocity source. We expect this source to overcome large acoustic impedance by maximizing sound pressure in a confined space, the RW niche. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, ear canal pressure, RW pressure, and stapes velocity are measured by acoustic RW stimulation of human temporal bones.
ISSN:0010-4825
1879-0534
DOI:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2018.04.026