Low Cost Cochlear Implant
Overview of Cochlear Implant
A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin.
A cochlear implant has the following parts:
- A microphone which picks up sounds from the environment.
- A speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds detected from microphone.
- A transmitter and receiver which receives signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses.
- An electrode array that collects impulses from simulator and sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve.
A cochlear implant is very different from a hearing aid. Hearing aids amplify sounds so they may be detected by damaged ears. Cochlear implants bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Signals generated by the implant are sent by way of the auditory nerve to the brain, which recognizes the signals as sound. Hearing through a cochlear implant is different from normal hearing and takes time to learn or relearn. However, it allows many people to recognize warning signals, understand other sounds in the environment, and understand speech in person or over the telephone.
Project Introduction
Around the world today there are millions of people with severe or total hearing loss. These people can live out fairly normal lives and form connections with other people. However, they are missing out on a key portion of communication, which is the ability to hear and speak. Currently, 325,000 people have been implanted with cochlear hearing implants. The reason that more people haven't been implanted is largely due to the cost. It can cost $30,000 to $50,000 without insurance to get the implant.
In 1961 Dr. William House implanted one of the world's first cochlear implants, a surgically inserted device that can give hearing to individuals with sensorineural hearing loss through direct stimulation of the auditory nerve. Dr. House's implant was a single electrode device, which stimulates the nerve in one location. Modern cochlear implants adopt a multi-electrode approach, stimulating different regions of the nerve to resolve different frequencies of speech.
The goal of this project is to design a cochlear implant that utilizes only one electrode, which reduces the overall cost of the implant. The single electrode approach has been undeveloped since the advent of multi-electrode devices, so we aim to improve the design by taking advantage of modern technologies such as microcontrollers and faster digital filtering techniques.