A micro-drive hearing aid: a novel non-invasive hearing prosthesis actuator

The direct hearing device (DHD) is a new auditory prosthesis that combines conventional hearing aid and middle ear implant technologies into a single device. The DHD is located deep in the ear canal and recreates sounds with mechanical movements of the tympanic membrane. A critical component of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBiomedical microdevices Vol. 16; no. 6; pp. 915 - 925
Main Authors Paulick, Peyton Elizabeth, Merlo, Mark W., Mahboubi, Hossein, Djalilian, Hamid R., Bachman, Mark
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston Springer US 01.12.2014
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Actuator design
Biological and Medical Physics
Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Biophysics
Devices
Ears & hearing
Engineering
Engineering Fluid Dynamics
Female
Hearing
Hearing Aids
Humans
Male
Medical devices
Membranes
Models, Theoretical
Movements
Nanotechnology
Prostheses
Prosthesis Design
Prosthetics
Surgical implants
Tympanic Membrane
Waveform analysis
Hearing aids
Microactuators
Auditory implants
Auditory prostheses
Cadaveric testing
Temporal bone measurements
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Summary:The direct hearing device (DHD) is a new auditory prosthesis that combines conventional hearing aid and middle ear implant technologies into a single device. The DHD is located deep in the ear canal and recreates sounds with mechanical movements of the tympanic membrane. A critical component of the DHD is the microactuator, which must be capable of moving the tympanic membrane at frequencies and magnitudes appropriate for normal hearing, with little distortion. The DHD actuator reported here utilized a voice coil actuator design and was 3.7 mm in diameter. The device has a smoothly varying frequency response and produces a precisely controllable force. The total harmonic distortion between 425 Hz and 10 kHz is below 0.5 % and acoustic noise generation is minimal. The device was tested as a tympanic membrane driver on cadaveric temporal bones where the device was coupled to the umbo of the tympanic membrane. The DHD successfully recreated ossicular chain movements across the frequencies of human hearing while demonstrating controllable magnitude. Moreover, the micro-actuator was validated in a short-term human clinical performance study where sound matching and complex audio waveforms were evaluated by a healthy subject.
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M. Bachman is with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 USA (phone: 949-824-6421; mbachman@uci.edu).
H. Djalilian is with the Department of Otolaryngology and Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 USA (hdjalili@uci.edu).
P. E. Paulick is with the Biomedical Engineering Department, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 USA (ppaulick@uci.edu).
M. W. Merlo is with Modular Bionics Inc, CA 94122 USA (mark@ModularBionics.com).
H. Mahboubi is with the Department of Otolaryngology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 USA (hmahboub@uci.edu).
ISSN:1387-2176
1572-8781
1572-8781
DOI:10.1007/s10544-014-9896-7