• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.7
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• pp.379-386
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• 2005

Among various kinds of hearing aids which have been developed so far. the conventional air conduction hearing aids have some problems such as the acoustic distortion, an howling effect due to acoustic feedback. Another type of hearing aid. the cochlear implant system can be applied to the profound imparied person. However. it shows the disadvantage that there is no possibility of recovery of the acoustic organ such as ossicle. On the other hand. the implantable middle ear heaving device directly vibratos the ossicular chain and has better sound qualify. good cosmetics for appearance. and wide frequency responses so that it can overcome the defects or the conventional hearing aids. In this paper, a mathematical modeling and a momentum equation derivation of the DET has been performed. For the optimization of the structure dimension generating maximal vibrating force of the DET. the computer simulation using a finite element analysis (FEA) software has been performed. Also. the vibrating transducer has been designed to make the frequency characteristics or the transducer be similar to those of the normal middle ear. Through the experimental results, the measured vibration characteristics of the DET has been evaluated to verify the performance for the application to implantable middle ear hearing devices.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.133-141
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• 2017

The hybrid acoustic sensor for implantable hearing aid has the structure in which a sound pressure based acoustic sensor (ECM) and a vibration based acceleration sensor are combined. This sensor combines the low frequency sensitivity of an acoustic sensor with the high frequency sensitivity of an acceleration sensor, allowing the acquisition of a wide range of sound from low to high frequency. In this paper, an acceleration sensor for use in a hybrid acoustic sensor has been proposed. The acceleration sensor captures the vibration of the tympanic membrane generated by the acoustic signal. The size of the proposed acceleration sensor was determined to diameter of 3.2 mm considering the anatomical structure of the tympanic membrane and the standard of ECM. In order to make the hybrid acoustic sensor have high sensitivity and wide bandwidth characteristics, the aim of the resonance frequency of the acceleration sensor is to be generated at about 3.5 kHz. The membrane of the acceleration sensor derives geometric structure through mathematical model and finite element analysis. Based on the analysis results, the membrane was implemented through a chemical etching process. In order to verify the frequency characteristics of the implemented membrane, vibration measurement experiment using external force was performed. The experiment results showed mechanical resonance of the membrane occurred at 3.4 kHz. Therefore, it is considered that the proposed acceleration sensor can be utilized for a hybrid acoustic sensor.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.217-225
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• 2002

The implantable middle ear(IME) system, which has good sound quality. superior sound intelligibility and wide frequency characteristics. can resolve the sound distortion and ringing effect by sound feedback at high gain operation those are the major problems of conventional hearing aid. In this paper, we have manufactured the IME system using differential electromagnetic transducer(DET) and verified the performance of the system by carrying out vibration and animal implanting experiment. The DET was manufactured using micro-machining technology and vibration experiment of the transducer was performed to inspect whether the transducer could vibrate in accordance with the applied sound signal or not. And the result of the loaded experiment using temporal bone sampled from cadaver showed that the transducer can drive the middle ear bone and transmit the signal to inner ear After the internal unit of IME system was implanted in a dog. the auditory brainstem response (ABR) test was carried out. The result of the test indicated the Proper behavior of the IME system in the living body From the results of the experiments, it is verified that the manufactured system ewll work well when it is applied to human and a basis of clinical experiment of IME system to real human hearing impaired was be arranged.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.625-632
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• 1999

이식형 인공중이에 사용되는 전자트랜스듀서는 압전형 트랜스듀서에 비해 음향특성은 좋으나 부피가 크고 효율이 낮으며 수술시 정밀한 코일-자석 간격 조정이 필요하며, 최근 제안된 FMT 트랜스듀서는 외부 자장의 변화에 민감하다는 문제점이 지적되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 코일-자석 간격조정이 필요 없고 외부자장에 영향을 받지 않는 차동 플로팅메스형 전자 트랜스듀서를 제안하였다. 제안된 방식은 2개의 소형 자석을 같은 극끼리 접합함으로써 외부자장에 대해 영향을 받지 않고 효율이 높은 등의 장점을 가진다. 제안된 트랜스듀서의 진동력 및 효율에 관한 정량적인 해석을 하였으며 기존의 트랜스듀서와 비교분석을 행하였다. 그리고 공급전류에 대해 발생되는 진동력의 크기를 계산함으로서 실제 이식형 인공중이의 제작에 필요한 객관적인 설계데이타를 제시하였다. 한편, 시험 제작된 트랜스듀서의 해석결과 제안한 트랜스듀서는 기존의 FMT 트랜스듀서보다도 효율이 1.5배 정도의 향상됨을 보였으며 무부하시험 및 사체의 이소골 진동실험을 통하여 적절한 진동을 효과적으로 이소골에 전달할 수 있음을 보였다.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.271-280
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• 2019

Recently, hearing loss patients have been increasing to excessive use of various multimedia devices. One of the hearing rehabilitation systems, bone conduction hearing aid can be used to conductive deafness patients efficiently. However, the conventional bone conduction hearing systems has some problems such as skin diseases, repulsion of patients, and vibration power reduction by skin damping. In this paper, to overcome the conventional problems, we proposed power improvement method by curved beam diaphragm. The proposed method is skin attachment system which is non-implantable, and then the power of transducer is improved by the proposed method. In order to improve the vibration power of diaphragm, variable that has correlation with displacement are extracted, the diaphragm designed by extracted variable. To verify efficient of the proposed method, experiment conducted by finite element analysis. As a result of, the proposed method confirmed improved power to compare with the conventional method and proposed method.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.286-293
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• 2009

The implantable middle ear hearing devices(IMEHDs) have been developed to overcome the conventional hearing aid's problem(ringing effect caused by the acoustic feedback, cosmetic problem, etc.). In the IMEHDs, the vibrating transducer is a key component because its vibration enables to hear for hearing impaired people. The vibrating transducer is implanted on ossicular chain by surgical operation. The coupling status between implanted transducer and ossicular chain has an effect on delivering vibrating force from transducer to stapes. Noninvasive method is required to investigate the output characteristics of IMEHDs after implementation. Recently, emitted sound pressure measuring method of tympanic membrane is proposed to investigate the output characteristics of IMEHDs. However, the relationship between displacement of stapes and sound pressure by tympanic membrane was not cleared. In this paper, displacement of stapes and sound pressure by tympanic membrane were measured using the differential floating mass transducer(DFMT) that implanted on the ossicular chain of the human temporal bone and physical ear model. Through the experiments results, the relationship between displacement of stapes and sound pressure by tympanic membrane was investigated.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.139-144
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• 2005

An implantable microphone that can be utilized as part of a totally implantable hearing aid is designed and implemented. The proposed microphone is implanted in the center of the pinna, and designed to ensure the speech frequency range and the appropriate sensitivity. The characteristics of the proposed microphone are evaluated using a finite element analysis (FEA). The microphone is composed of a small electric condenser microphone, titanium case 6.2mm in diameter and 3mm high, and $10{\mu}m$ SUS316L vibrating membrane in contact with hypodermic tissue to maintain the sensitivity of the microphone. The microphone components are all made of biocompatible materials, then the assembled microphone is hermetically sealed using a polymer and ceramic. Experiments with the fabricated microphone confirm an operational bandwidth of up to 5kHz without any decline of sensitivity in 6mm of hypodermic tissue.