• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.375-385
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• 2016

Recently, several implantable hearing aids such as cochlear implant, middle ear implant, etc., which have a module receiving power and signal from outside the body, are frequently used to treat the hearing impaired patients. Most of implantable hearing aids are adopted permanent magnet pairs to couple between internal and external devices for the enhancement of power transmission. Generally, the internal device which containing the magnet in the center of receiving coil is implanted under the skin of human temporal bone. In case of MRI scanning of a patient with the implantable hearing aid, however, homogeneous magnetic fields of the MRI might be interfered by the implanted magnet. For the above reasons, the MR image is degraded by large area of artifact, so that diagnostics are almost impossible in deteriorated region. In this paper, we proposed an external coil system that can reduce the artifact of MR image due to the internal coupling magnet. By finite element analysis estimating area of MR artifact according to varying current and shape of the external coil, optimal coil parameters were extracted. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed external coil system was verified by confirming the artifact at real MRI scan.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.169-176
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• 2015

Implantable closed-loop epilepsy controllers require ideally both accurate epileptic seizure detection and low power consumption. On-chip oscillators can be used in implantable devices because they consume less power than other oscillators such as crystal oscillators. In this study, we investigated the tolerable error range of a lower power on-chip oscillator without losing the accuracy of seizure detection. We used 24 ictal and 14 interictal intracranial electroencephalographic segments recorded from epilepsy surgery patients. The performance variations with respect to oscillator frequency errors were estimated in terms of specificity, modified sensitivity, and detection timing difference of seizure onset using Generic Osorio Frei Algorithm. The frequency errors of on-chip oscillators were set at ${\pm}10%$ as the worst case. Our results showed that an oscillator error of ${\pm}10%$ affected both specificity and modified sensitivity by less than 3%. In addition, seizure onsets were detected with errors earlier or later than without errors and the average detection timing difference varied within less than 0.5 s range. The results suggest that on-chip oscillators could be useful for low-power implantable devices without error compensation circuitry requiring significant additional power. These findings could help the design of closed-loop systems with a seizure detector and automated stimulators for intractable epilepsy patients.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.487-495
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• 1998

In this paper, a new type of implantable middle ear hearing aid, which consists of external loop coil, a small magnet and a simple external device, is proposed. The internal device of proposed type consists of only a small magnet and the external device does not need to be positioned behind the ear or in the ear canal. The proposed type is excellent in cosmetic sides and very convenient to use, because the external device can be hidden in upper garment and collar of clothes. Also, purposely this type doesn't need to be small on the size of battery, which means it has longer battery life. Therefore, the battery is not necessary to be charged frequently. It also can solve the difficulty of gap calibration at surgical operation which conventional Implantable middle. Therefore, the battery is not necessary to be charged frequently. It also can solve the difficulty of gap calibration at surgical operation which conventional implantable middle ear hearing aid has. We investigate the performance of proposed implantable middle ear bearing aid and we analyze that proposed type is appropriate for mild and severe hearing impaired person and the result of experiment showed the accuracy of our analysis. For the validation of our analysis we used the temporal bone at the experiment and confirm that ossicles can be vibrated when the proposed system In startled in the body.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.127-132
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• 2005

Transducers for implantable hearing aids need to be small and to have good performance in frequency responses and vibration properties. From this viewpoint, we Proposed a multi-layer actuator with the piezoelectric single crystal, PMN-PT. for the implantable hearing aid. and verified its adequacy through finite element analyses and experiments. PMN-PT multi-layer actuator samples were fabricated by stacking fourteen layers of the PMN-PT crystal. Each layer were $0.2{\cal}mm$ thick and the actuator sample was $2.8{\cal}mm$ thick in total. We evaluated the performance of the PMN-PT actuator through impedance analyses and vibration displacement measurements, and compared the result with that of a PZT actuator. Results of all the process confirmed the feasibility of the PMN-PT actuator as a good transducer for an implantable hearing aid.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.249-254
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• 2014

Recent advancement of USN technology has lent itself to the evolving communication technology for implantable devices in the field of medical service. The wireless transmission section for communication between implantable medical devices and patients is a cause of concern over invasion of privacy, resulting from external attackers' hacking and thus leakage of private medical information. In addition, any attempt to manipulate patients' medical information could end up in serious medical issues. The present study proposes an authentication protocol safe against intruders' attacks when RFID/USN technology is applied to implantable medical devices. Being safe against spoofing, information exposure and eavesdropping attacks, the proposed protocol is based on hash-function operation and adopts session keys and random numbers to prevent re-encryption. This paper verifies the security of the proposed protocol using the formal verification tool, Casper/FDR.

• 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 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 Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.144-150
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• 2012

A microphone for fully implantable hearing device was generally implanted under the skin of the temporal bone. So, the implanted microphone's characteristics can be affected by the accompanying noise due to masticatory movement. In this paper, the implantable microphone with 2-channels structure was designed for reduction of the generated noise signal by masticatory movement. And an experimental model for generation of the noise by masticatory movement was developed with considering the characteristics of human temporal bone and skin. Using the model, the speech signal by a speaker and the artificial noise by a vibrator were supplied simultaneously into the experimental model, the electrical signals were measured at the proposed microphone. The collected signals were processed using a general adaptive filter with least mean square(LMS) algorithm. To confirm performance of the proposed methods, the correlation coefficient and the signal to noise ratio(SNR) before and after the signal processing were calculated. Finally, the results were compared each other.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.1470-1476
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• 2002

The goal of this work is to design and build an implantable artificial lung that can be inserted as a whole into a large vein in the body with the least effect on cardiovascular hemodynamics. The experimental results demonstrate that the pressure drop is not entirely related to viscosity effects. The friction factor decreases with an increase in the number of tied-hollow fibers at a constant Reynolds number A uniform flow pattern without stagnation is observed at all numbers of tied hollow fibers tested. The tied hollow fiber module, built in this study with 3 cm of outer diameter of module. 380 m of outer diameter of tied hollow fiber, and 700 number of tied hollow fiber with length of 60 cm, which shows a pressure drop of 13-16 mmHg, satisfies the required pressure drop qualifying 15 mmHg as an intravascular artificial lung.

• The Journal of the Korean life insurance medical association
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.12-15
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• 2011

Background: The beneficial effects of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) in primary and secondary prevention patients are well established. However, data on potential differences between both groups in mortality are scarce. The aim of this study was to assess extra risk differences between primary and secondary prevention ICD recipients. Methods: Comparative mortality figures were calculated from a source article using mortality analysis methods. Results: Mortality ratio (MR) of primary and secondary prevention ICD recipients were 393% and 373%. Excess death rates (EDR) of both groups were 42 and 38 per 1,000. Discussion: MR and EDR were higher in primary prevention group. But, there was no significant difference.