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Pinhead-Sized Implant Could Replace Hearing Aids
An anonymous reader writes "Depending on the level of hearing impairment, conventional aids may not be good enough and a hearing implant is the only option. Until now the required surgery to fit them has taken several hours. However, that is about to change. A new implant that can be fitted with outpatient surgery has been developed consisting of a 1.2mm electro-acoustic transducer, which is positioned at the so-called 'round window,' which is where the middle and inner ear connect. It then produces amplified mechanical vibrations that stimulate the auditory nerve. Even though the transducer is tiny, it can reach volumes of up to 120 decibels."
you can hear a pin drop
Cochlear implants are required for some deaf patients, and those are the implants that require surgery. This PR bulletin from the Fraunhoffer institute is very cool, but it's like the retinal implants for vision, actually it's not even up to the level of retinal implants which are at least currently being tested. This implant system only has had its individual parts created.
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Those individual components have not yet been put together to make a full hearing aid. This is just a proof of concept or feasibility study thus far. They still have to select the materials that will be used for the long term implantation. An assembled version may be ready next year. As for the extremely small size claimed, that small size is just for the "electroacoustic transducer" (the details in the PDF file says it's a piezoelectric micro-actuator). And the round window is already the part of the ear that bulges in and out as the oval window accepts input from the stapedius. So this adds pressure on the other side of the fluid column. Experts are currently testing a first working prototype in the laboratory. Results have been positive to date. "The individual components of the hearing aid have all been developed. The next step is to optimize and assemble them," says Kaltenbacher. The implant must measure up to high requirements: the material must be encased so the body tolerates it and it has to remain stable over long periods -- after all, hearing aid implants should last at least ten years. The optimized individual components should be ready by June of this year; testing of the overall system is planned for 2014.
What? All I hear is ringing! ;(
Having severe hearing loss in one ear, this is very interesting to me, but honestly I would rather wait for results on current studies looking into regenerating damaged hair cells before pursuing this. The headline "Regaining Proper Hearing at Last" is in my opinion not quite correct; from what I can tell, they're just tickling whatever cells are left to stimulate harder than before, as opposed to restoring the full capability of input. Then you've still got signal processing issues like phase discrepancies, gaps in frequency coverage that need to be made up by transposing or saturating neighbor/harmonic frequencies, and all sorts of related hairy business. A big advantage here is you can break out the processing to a box with beefier DSP than you could fit in a BTE device, with batteries that last longer.
Definitely a step in the right direction, and by far better than similar solutions in the past, but still a long way from perfect.
Why hasn't China flooded the market with cheap, high quality hearing aids yet?
For the same reason they haven't flooded any technology market with cheap, high quality goods. Because that is not their stong-point. Cheap, questionable quality (possibly toxic) hearing aids would be their market.
Of course you won't be able to have a Chinese hearing aid if you work for the US Government or want to maintain a US security clearance.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
Especially when it was pointed out to him that this was a different kind of pinhead.
I am officially gone from
Even though the transducer is tiny, it can reach volumes of up to 120 decibels.
We've found our next form of torture.
I have an excellent chinese made motherboard that was pretty inexpensive....uh. No that was actually made in Taiwan. Never mind. That's the Republic of China not the "peoples" Republic.
....of Zippy crammed in my cochlea and shouting non-sequiturs at my eardrum.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
It is capable of producing sounds up to 120 dB (assuming they meant dB SPL, or equivalent). This is not the same as 120 dB of amplification. (This is why those pesky letters SPL matter, and I'm surprised a Faunhofer report wasn't explicit). Of course, then the device could potentially detect a 0 dB SPL sound and amplify it to 120 dB, but that's really no different than any current technology, and it won't, and doesn't, happen.
So no, I have not seen anyone who wears hearing aids or cochlear implants scream and rip off their hearing aids or transmitters due to obscene amplification. Yes, I know plenty users of both (mostly young though).
Lastly, patients probably will have an off switch, and will also be able to take off the transmitters just like a CI user can.
The article certainly lacks a clear definition of what is meant by "it can output volumes of up to 120 decibels". I assume they mean something equivalent to a 120 dB SPL sound measured at the entrance to the ear canal.
Here's the thing. It's an implant placed on the round window of the cochlea. So we're talking acoustic/mechanical coupling of solids, not spherical wave radiation. Talking about placing this unit in the ear canal doesn't make sense and implies that you didn't RTFS...say it isn't so , Slashdot.
Also, even when talking about hearing aid receivers in an ear canal, you're not talking about free-field acoustics, but acoustics inside a squishy, non-uniform tube-like cavity. So no, you can't just move it closer to double the level.
...then you have to turn shut them down completely (not airplane mode) for take-off and landing.
First you're required to have them, then you're required to turn them off. Sounds like a future I've been trained to be willing to believe in.