Ultraminiature encapsulated accelerometers as a fully implantable sensor for implantable hearing aids.
Experiments were conducted to evaluate a silicon accelerometer as an implantable sound sensor for implantable hearing aids. The main motivation of this study is to find an alternative sound sensor that is implantable inside the body, yet does not suffer from the signal attenuation from the body. The merit of the accelerometer sensor as a sound sensor will be that it will utilize the natural mechanical conduction in the middle ear as a source of the vibration. With this kind of implantable sound sensor, a totally implantable hearing aid is feasible. A piezoresistive silicon accelerometer that is completely encapsulated with a thin silicon film and long flexible flex-circuit electrical cables were used for this study. The sensor is attached on the middle ear ossicles and measures the vibration transmitted from the tympanic membrane due to the sound in the ear canal. In this study, the sensor is fully characterized on a human cadaveric temporal bone preparation.
Park
Woo-Tae
WT
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. wtpark@gmail.com
O'Connor
Kevin N
KN
Chen
Kuan-Lin
KL
Mallon
Joseph R
JR
Maetani
Toshiki
T
Dalal
Parmita
P
Candler
Rob N
RN
Ayanoor-Vitikkate
Vipin
V
Roberson
Joseph B
JB
Puria
Sunil
S
Kenny
Thomas W
TW
D000054:Acceleration; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D008904:Miniaturization; D019736:Prostheses and Implants; D014159:Transducers; D014732:Vibration