• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.171-182
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• 2002

The differential electromagnetic transducer for IME(implantable middle ear) system, which have two small permanent magnets glued with the same pole facing each other in the coil, has high vibration efficiency and does not influenced by external magnetic field. In this paper, using finite element method, highly efficient structure of the transducer was proposed and vibration force of the transducer was calculated by electromagnetic theory. And the necessary vibration force of transducer to transmit the sound signal to inner ear when the transducer is attached at stapes was calculated and the design parameters of the transducer were investigated. Using the parameters, the differential electromagnetic transducer was manufactured in small size to implant in confined human middle ear. And it was examined by unloaded and loaded vibration experiment using temporal bone sampled from cadaver.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.473-476
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• 2005

In this paper a new type of piezoelectric floating mass type transducer (PFMT) which has advantages of the piezoelectric transducers and the electromagnetic ones has been proposed and designed. To evaluate the frequency characteristics of the PFMT, the finite element analysis and the acoustic simulation of transducer have been performed. The designed PFMT was implemented by a precision manufacturing and the vibration characteristics of the PFMT were measured. Through the measured results from various experiments, it is verified that the implemented PFMT can be used in implantable middle ear hearing devices.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.05
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• pp.136-140
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• 1997

In this paper, we proposed a implantable middle ear system using FM transmission and receiving method which has higher detection efficiency than that of AM method. And a new shape of vibrating transducer which is more efficiently vibrate than the conventional type is designed. This tranducer consist of coil and small T-type cylindrical permanent magnet. We investigated and compared the differences between conventional methods and proposed methods by quantitive analysis. We proved them by experiment.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.466-475
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• 1997

In this paper, an implantable middle ear hearing aids using an electromagnetic transducer which consists of a tiny coil and a magnet is designed, and objective design method to implement a vibrator of the electromagnetic type transducer is proposed. Sound characteristic of the electromagnetic type vibrator is excellent but power transfer rate is lower than that of a ceramic type. To improve power transfer efficiency of system, external and inner part of a middle ear system is designed using FM transmission method. We implemented an experimental set of the designed transducer, inner part, and outer part. Then, we measured vibration characteristics of a metal strip and a temporal bone of a dead body. As the results, we confirmed the advantage of FM method and showed that designed transducer could effectively transmit vibration of amplified input sound pressure to ossicle.

• 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 Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.178-184
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• 2014

Key components of implantable hearing aids are consist of an acoustic sensor that collect external sound by suppressing the body noise, a signal processor module for compensation algorithm of hearing loss, and a output transducer which has tiny size but have high efficiency, respectively. In the partial implantable hearing aids, technologies of transducer and signal processor are so matured that can be applied not too much difficulty. However, due to the difficulties in implantable acoustic sensor technology, such as minimization of masticatory sound and damage of sensor's membrane from external impact, practical use of fully implantable hearing aids have not successful so far. In this paper, we have proposed a novel implantable acoustic sensor which has trans-tympanic structure, and is verified that the proposed method can be very useful for fully implantable hearing aids by cadaveric experiments.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.150-155
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• 2013

Recently, various hearing aids are developed to overcome hearing loss. There are available hearing aids, such as air conduction hearing aid, implantable middle ear hearing aid and so on. But air conduction hearing aid is inconvenience caused by howling, and ossicle chain driving type implantable middle ear hearing aid has some week point due to problem of possible nercobiosis of coupling spot along incus long process. In recent years, in order to improve these shortcomings round window (RW) driving hearing aid has been paying attention. In this paper, the physical cochlear model is proposed for a performance evaluation of the RW driving hearing aids of a transducer. In order to verify an experiment proposed on a performance of physical cochlear model, the transducer which has ossicles characteristics is used. By measuring and comparing the frequency characteristics of transducer with ossicles and human temporal bone, performance of physical cochlear model was verified. As from the result of experiment, it is expected that an implemented cochlear model is useful for evaluating characteristics of RW transducer.

• 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 Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.165-173
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• 2007

A differential floating mass transducer has been developed in Korea for fully implantable middle ear hearing devices (F-IMEHDs). In particular, the performance of a differential floating mass transducer (DFMT) is very important among the parts of the F-IMEHDs because the mechanical vibration generated by DFMT is delivered to the inner ear directly. In this paper, the electrical model is proposed to analyze the DFMT vibration characteristic using the mechanical model of the DFMT. The electrical model enables the simple analysis of DFMT vibration characteristics using a computer program. The proposed electrical model is simulated through PSpice as changing the values of passive elements in the electrical model. To verify the proposed model, the DFMT has been implemented on the basis of the simulated results and the experiment for vibration measurement has been carried out. Through the comparison, it is verified that the proposed model is useful to analyze the vibration characteristics of the DFMT.