Partially implantable vibrating ossicular prosthesis

A partially implantable hearing prosthesis for sensorineural hearing loss patients has been developed using a novel electromagnetic actuator. The system is designed to couple acoustic frequency, vibrational energy into the ossicular structure of the middle ear. The complete system includes external signal processing and a transdermal telemetry system. The focus of this paper is to describe the transducer used to convert electrical energy into vibrational energy. This paper includes transducer design, transducer performance, initial reliability estimates generated from accelerated life testing, and in vitro test results.