Cochlear Implant Stimulation with Patient-Specific Weighting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current cochlear implant systems fail to effectively utilize interaural time delays (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs) due to tonotopic mismatches between electrode placements and neural populations in bilateral implant users, hindering sound localization and conversation follow-up in three-dimensional environments.
Innovation Solution
The system processes acoustic signals with a bank of filters to generate band pass signals, extracts stimulation information, and applies a weighting matrix reflecting patient-specific perceptual characteristics to produce electrode stimulation signals, ensuring interaural matching of ITDs and ILDs by simultaneously stimulating a group of electrodes and adjusting stimulation sites tonotopically.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If traditional cochlear implant systems use fixed electrode stimulation patterns, then device complexity is reduced, but sound localization accuracy deteriorates due to tonotopic mismatches
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts electrode stimulation patterns based on extracted ITD and ILD information from acoustic signals. The electrode selection and stimulation parameters are continuously adapted to match the tonotopic organization of the patient's neural populations, transforming a static implant system into a dynamic one that optimizes sound localization in real-time
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes multiple parameters including electrode selection, stimulation intensity, and pulse timing based on the extracted interaural time delays and level differences. By varying these stimulation parameters according to the incoming acoustic signal characteristics, the system achieves accurate sound localization while accounting for individual patient anatomy
2Measurement precision
If multiple electrodes are stimulated simultaneously to improve sound localization, then sound perception accuracy is improved, but power consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of uniformly stimulating all electrodes or using a fixed number of electrodes, the system applies local quality by selectively stimulating only those electrodes corresponding to the specific frequency bands and neural populations relevant to the incoming sound's ITD and ILD characteristics. This localized stimulation approach maintains sound localization accuracy while minimizing the number of active electrodes and thus power consumption
Data Source
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AI summary
Electrode stimulation signals are generated for an implanted electrode array. An acoustic audio signal is processed with a bank of filters that are each associated with a band of audio frequencies, and a set of band pass signals is generated with each band pass signal corresponding to the band of frequencies associated with one of the filters. Stimulation information is extracted from the band pass signals to generate a set of stimulation event signals defining electrode stimulation signals. Then the stimulation event signals are weighted with a weighted matrix of stimulation amplitudes reflecting patient- specific perceptual characteristics to produce a set of electrode stimulation signals for electrodes in the implanted electrode array.