• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.162-168
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• 2009

Implantable middle ear hearing devices (IMEHDs) have been widely studied as an alternative hearing aids to solve the problems of conventional hearing aids. Vibration transducer of middle ear hearing aids is a key component because vibration characteristics of transducer is directly involved performance of hearing aids. So, the study about middle ear hearing aids concentrate on the transducers. A floating mass type transducer is most efficient. In this paper, we suggest a lumped mechanical model of electromagnetic floating mass transducer implanted on human middle ear. The proposed model enables analysis of the vibration characteristics of a floating mass transducer and prediction of the variation after implant on ossicle that offers a simple and easy to analyze. The parameters was drawn based on the components and the structures of transducer. The Lumped mechanical model was converted by the electrical-mechanical equivalent model, and simulated using PSpice. So, we investigated vibration characteristics of transducer influenced it's components. And we predict vibration characteristics of stapes footplate due to implanted transducer's vibration using combining model of transducer and human ear. To prove the feasibility of the suggested model, we fabricated a differential floating mass transducer (DFMT) as one of floating mass transducers and performed experiments using the human temporal bones.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.59-68
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• 1998

Digital hearing aids offer many advantages over conventional analog hearing aids. With the advent of high speed digital signal processing chips, new digital techniques have been introduced to digital hearing aids. In addition, the evaluation of new ideas in hearing aids is necessarily accompanied by intensive subject-based clinical tests which requires much time and cost. In this paper, we present an objective method to evaluate and predict the performance of hearing aid systems without the help of such subject-based tests. In the hearing impairment simulation(HIS) algorithm, a sensorineural hearing impairment medel is established from auditory test data of the impaired subject being simulated. Also, the nonlinear behavior of the loudness recruitment is defined using hearing loss functions generated from the measurements. To transform the natural input sound into the impaired one, a frequency sampling filter is designed. The filter is continuously refreshed with the level-dependent frequency response function provided by the impairment model. To assess the performance, the HIS algorithm was implemented in real-time using a floating-point DSP. Signals processed with the real-time system were presented to normal subjects and their auditory data modified by the system was measured. The sensorineural hearing impairment was simulated and tested. The threshold of hearing and the speech discrimination tests exhibited the efficiency of the system in its use for the hearing impairment simulation. Using the HIS system we evaluated three typical hearing aid algorithms.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.449-455
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• 2010

Implantable middle ear hearing devices(IMEHDs) have being actively studied to overcome the problems of conventional hearing aids. Vibration transducer, an output devices of IMEHDs, is attached on the ossicular chain and transmits mechanical vibration to cochlea. This approach allows us to hear more clear sound because mechanical vibration is effective to transfer high frequency acoustics, but occurs some problems such as fatigue accumulation to ossicular chian and reduction of vibration displacement caused by mass loading effect. Recently, many studies for the round window stimulation are announced, because it does not cause such problems. It have been studied by older transducers designed for attaching on ossicular chain. In this paper, we proposed a new electromagnetic transducer which consists of two magnets, three coils and a vibration membrane. The magnet assembly, magnet coupled in opposite direction, were placed in the center of three coils, and the optimum length of each coil generating maximum vibrational force was calculated by finite element analysis(FEA). The transducer was implemented as the calculated length of each coil, and measured vibration displacement. From the results, it is verified the vibration displacement can be improved by optimizing the length of coils.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1249-1256
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• 2019

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to remove acoustic feedback and noise in hearing aids. Instead of using the conventional FIR structure, this algorithm is a deep learning algorithm using neural network adaptive prediction filter to improve the feedback and noise reduction performance. The feedback canceller first removes the feedback signal from the microphone signal and then removes the noise using the Wiener filter technique. Noise elimination is to estimate the speech from the speech signal containing noise using the linear prediction model according to the periodicity of the speech signal. In order to ensure stable convergence of two adaptive systems in a loop, coefficient updates of the feedback canceller and noise canceller are separated and converged using the residual error signal generated after the cancellation. In order to verify the performance of the feedback and noise canceller proposed in this study, a simulation program was written and simulated. Experimental results show that the proposed deep learning algorithm improves the signal to feedback ratio(: SFR) of about 10 dB in the feedback canceller and the signal to noise ratio enhancement(: SNRE) of about 3 dB in the noise canceller than the conventional FIR structure.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2007

Recently, implantable middle ear hearing devices (IMEHDs) have been developed to overcome the problems of conventional hearing aids. In this paper, a piezoelectric floating mass transducer (PFMT) based on a PZT multi-layered actuator has been designed and implemented using the approximated mechanical vibration modeling for the PFMT and the analysis of vibration characteristics through the transformation into the equivalent electrical model. The implemented PFMT has been attached to the ossicle of a human cadaver's temporal bone and the in-vitro experiment has been performed. Through the experimental results, it has been verified that the PFMT applied into our developed implantable middle ear hearing device can be used for an IMEHD transducer.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.24-33
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• 2013

To enhance the speech perception of hearing aid users in noisy environment, most hearing aid devices adopt various beamforming algorithms such as the first-order differential microphone (DM1) and the two-stage directional microphone (DM2) algorithms that maintain sounds from the direction of the interlocutor and reduce the ambient sounds from the other directions. However, these conventional algorithms represent poor directionality ability in low frequency area. Therefore, to enhance the speech perception of hearing aid uses in low frequency range, our group had suggested a fractional delay subtraction and integration (FDSI) algorithm and estimated its theoretical performance using computer simulation in previous article. In this study, we performed a KEMAR test in non-reverberant room that compares the performance of DM1, DM2, broadband beamforming (BBF), and proposed FDSI algorithms using several objective indices such as a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement, a segmental SNR (seg-SNR) improvement, a perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), and an Itakura-Saito measure (IS). Experimental results showed that the performance of the FDSI algorithm was -3.26-7.16 dB in SNR improvement, -1.94-5.41 dB in segSNR improvement, 1.49-2.79 in PESQ, and 0.79-3.59 in IS, which demonstrated that the FDSI algorithm showed the highest improvement of SNR and segSNR, and the lowest IS. We believe that the proposed FDSI algorithm has a potential as a beamformer for digital hearing aid devices.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.29-34
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• 2010

The fully implantable hearing devices (FIHDs) have been studied to compensate the defect of conventional hearing aids. Typically, a microphone for FIHDs was implanted under the skin of the temporal bone. So, implantable microphone characteristics can be affected by the eating food, chattering teeth and moving artifact. In this paper, we fabricated the physical model that was similar to characteristics of human temporal bone and skin, and we measured implanted microphone sensitivity for effect of bone conducted noise signal. For the measurement of microphone sensitivity, we applied 1 kHz pure sounds that were transmitted to implanted microphone and sine wave vibrations of varied frequency were simultaneously transmitted through the artificial bone. As a result, sensitivity of implanted microphone can be modified by bone conducted signal and this phenomenon was confirmed at varied frequency band.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.678-684
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• 2018

In order to broaden the indication of middle ear implant, research has been actively conducted on the reverse output method that stimulates the round window. However, it is very difficult to transmit the vibration output effectively because the indivisual anatomical difference of the round window niche is very large and also the visual field is not secured even by a skilled otolaryngologic surgeon. In this paper, we propose a new reverse stimulation method of middle ear implants that transmits energy to the inner ear by using air as a medium. This can compensate for the disadvantages of the conventional method of transmitting vibration energy and minimizes the energy transfer efficiency interference due to the combination of the excitation point and the output device. It was shown that forward and backward transfer characteristics were obtained by cadaveric experiments, and it was shown that it can overcome the acoustical impedance of high round window and transmit energy to inner ear. The receiver, which is the output device of the conventional hearing aids, can generate a constant volume velocity, so it can have a high output at a limited volume, such as a round window niche. So, suggested method can overcome the high acoustical impedance of the round window and deliver acoustic energy to the inner ear.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.924-930
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose a novel approach of low computational complexity to improve the speech quality of the small acoustic equipment in noisy environment. The conventional gain control algorithm suppresses the noise of input signal, and then the part of wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) amplifies the undesired signal. The proposed algorithm controls the gain of hearing aids according to speech present probability by using the output of a voice activity detection (VAD). The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated under various noise conditions by using objective measurement and yields superior results compared with the conventional algorithm.