Abstract
To overcome the inherent deficiencies of hearing aids, implantable middle ear hearing devices (IMEHDs) have emerged as a new treatment for hearing loss. However, clinical results show that the IMEHD performance varies with its transducer’s stimulating site. To numerically analyze the influence of the piezoelectric transducer’s stimulating sites on its hearing compensation performance, we constructed a human ear finite element model and confirmed its validity. Based on this finite element model, the displacement stimulation, which simulates the piezoelectric transducer’s stimulation, was applied to the umbo, the incus long process, the incus body, the stapes, and the round window membrane, respectively. Then, the stimulating site’s effect of the piezoelectric transducer was analyzed by comparing the corresponding displacements of the basilar membrane. Besides, the stimulating site’s sensitivity to the direction of excitation was also studied. The result of the finite element analysis shows that stimulating the incus body is least efficient for the piezoelectric transducer. Meanwhile, stimulating the round window membrane or the stapes generates a higher basilar membrane displacement than stimulating the eardrum or the incus long process. However, the performance of these two ideal sites’ stimulation is sensitive to the changes in the excitation’s direction. Thus, the round window membrane and the stapes is the ideal stimulating sites for the piezoelectric transducer regarding the driving efficiency. The direction of the excitation should be guaranteed for these ideal sites.
Highlights
Hearing loss, affecting around 466 million people worldwide, is one of the six leading causes of disease burden in our society [1]
There is still no effective medical treatment to sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which is the main type of hearing loss taking up approximately 90% of reported hearing loss [2]
A typical schematic illustration of the implantable middle ear hearing devices (IMEHDs) is shown in Figure 1 [6]
Summary
Hearing loss, affecting around 466 million people worldwide, is one of the six leading causes of disease burden in our society [1]. There is still no effective medical treatment to sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which is the main type of hearing loss taking up approximately 90% of reported hearing loss [2]. The patients with SNHL mainly turn to hearing aids for restoring audibility [3]. Sophisticated hearing aids have been developed, hearing aids still have a number of inherent shortcomings, such as a limited high-frequency amplification gain, ear canal occlusion, and feedback annoyance [4]. To overcome these problems, many researchers proposed and designed the implantable middle ear hearing devices (IMEHDs), which restores audibility by the mechanical vibration of their implanted transducers [5]. A typical schematic illustration of the IMEHD is shown in Figure 1 [6]
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