Numerical analysis of the effects of ossicular chain malformations on bone conduction stimulation.

Numerical analysis of the effects of ossicular chain malformations on bone conduction stimulation. Comput Methods Biomech Biomed Engin. 2020 Nov 30;:1-14 Authors: Zhao Y, Liu W, Liu H, Yang J, Zhou L, Huang X Abstract To assess the effects of ossicular chain malformations on the performance of bone conduction hearing aids, a human ear finite-element model that includes an ear canal, a middle ear, and a spiral cochlea incorporating the third windows was established. This finite element model was built based on micro-computed tomography scanning and reverse modelling techniques, and the reliability of the finite element model was verified by comparison with reported experimental data. Based on this model, two main types of ossicular chain malformations, i.e., the incudostapedial disconnection and the ossicles fixation, were simulated, and their influences on bone conduction were analyzed by comparing the trans-cochlear-partition differential pressures. The results indicate that the incudostapedial disconnection mainly deteriorates the bone conduction response at mid frequencies. The stapes fixation has the largest effect among the ossicles fixation with the bone conduction stimulation, which also mainly decreases the mid-frequency response of the bone conduction, especially at 2 kHz. As the speech intelligibility has the most important frequency range at the range between 1 kHz and 2.5 kHz, the mid-frequency deterioration caused ...
Source: Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering - Category: Biomedical Engineering Authors: Tags: Comput Methods Biomech Biomed Engin Source Type: research