Oticon Medical A/s

Cochlear Limited

Bradford Backus

Søren Kamaric Riis

Thomas Lunner

Pierre Stahl

Dorothea Wendt

Guillaume Tourrel

Dan Gnansia

Manuel Segovia Martinez

Behnam Molaee

Marianna Vatti

Régis Pierquin

Mathias Dietz

Kai Dang

A cochlear implant hearing aid system is disclosed. The cochlear implant hearing aid system comprises an external part. The external part includes a sound pickup unit configured to pick up sound from the environment and a sound processing unit configured to process said sound. The cochlear implant hearing aid system further comprises an implant part. The implant part includes an implant processing unit and a plurality of cochlea stimulation electrodes for stimulation of a cochlea of a user. The cochlear implant hearing aid system further comprises a near-infrared transmitter configured to transmit a near-infrared wave. The cochlear implant hearing aid system further comprises a near-infrared receiver configured to receive said near-infrared wave.

Near infrared light in hearing aid appliances

The disclosure relates to a cochlear implant system, and more particularly, the disclosure relates to a processor unit which includes a switching mean configured to switch between using a fixed stimulation frame onset or a variable stimulation frame onset for frame coding a plurality of stimulation pulses into a one or more stimulation frames.

Cochlear implant system with optimized frame coding

An implantable hearing aid system is disclosed. According to one or more of the mentioned aspects, the implantable hearing aid system comprises a charger unit which includes a coil unit having a first resonance frequency, a hearing aid and an implantable component. The hearing aid includes a rechargeable battery, an inductive coil arrangement having a second resonance frequency configured to form an inductive charging link with the coil unit to receive power signals from the charger unit. The implantable component includes an implantable coil, wherein the inductive coil arrangement may further be configured to form a transcutaneous link with the implantable coil to transmit at least one of data and power to the implantable component.

Charging and updating of an implantable hearing aid

An aspect of the disclosure is to provide a method and a hearing aid system comprising; a microphone unit configured to receive an acoustical input and provide an audio signal based on the acoustical input, and wherein the audio signal includes a sound pressure level; a storing unit including a normal hearing loudness model, a loudness scheme, a stimulation model and a coding parameter model; a sound output unit configured to stimulate auditory nerve fibers of a recipient of the hearing aid system based on audible stimulations; a processing unit configured to; extract a normal hearing loudness based on the sound pressure level and the normal hearing loudness model, and the normal hearing loudness model includes a plurality of normal hearing loudness as a function of a plurality of sound pressure levels; transform the normal hearing loudness to a secondary hearing loudness according to a loudness scheme; determine a stimulation level within a dynamic range of a recipient of the hearing aid system based on the secondary hearing loudness and the stimulation model, where the stimulation model includes a relation between a plurality of stimulation levels and a plurality of secondary hearing loudness; determine one or more stimulation coding parameters based on the coding parameter model, where the coding parameter model includes a relation between the determined stimulation level and the one or more stimulation coding parameters; and wherein the processing unit is configured to generate the audible stimulations based on the determined one or more stimulation coding parameters and provide the audible stimulations via the sound output unit to the auditory nerve fibers of the recipient of the hearing aid system such that the recipient perceives the secondary hearing loudness.

Generalized method for providing one or more stimulation coding parameters in a hearing aid system for obtaining a perceivable hearing loudness

The aspect of the disclosure is achieved by a cochlear implant system which comprises a microphone unit configured to receive an acoustical signal and transmit an audio signal based on the acoustical signal and an electrode array comprising a plurality of electrodes. Furthermore, the system comprises a processor unit including a filter bank which includes multiple bandpass channels configured to divide the audio signal into multiple bandpass audio signals. Each of the multiple bandpass channel may be confined to an electrode of the plurality of electrodes. Furthermore, the system may comprise a first temporal feature extractor configured to determine a primary group of temporal features of a bandpass audio signal of the multiple bandpass audio signals, and a second temporal feature extractor configured to window filter the bandpass audio signal and determine a secondary group of temporal features of the window filtered bandpass audio signal. The system further comprises a stimulation generator configured to determine a final group of temporal features based on the primary group of temporal features and the secondary group of temporal features, and a similarity measure value of the primary and the secondary group of temporal features is determined for the final group of temporal features. The processor unit is configured to decide based on the similarity measure value whether the final group of temporal features is to be encoded into a stimulation pulse or to prioritize based on the similarity measure value a stimulation pulse encoded based on the final group of temporal features, and wherein the encoded stimulation pulse is transferred to an electrode of the plurality of electrodes, and where the electrode is configured to apply an electrical stimulation to a group of auditory nerve fibers of a recipient of the cochlear implant system based on the encoded stimulation pulse.

Cochlear implant system with an improved selection of temporal features for which to be coded into stimulation pulses

A cochlear implant device is disclosed, comprising an inductive antenna, a stimulation unit, an electrode array, and an energy harvesting apparatus. The inductive antenna is configured to receive energy to operate the cochlear implant and to receive signals for a stimulation of a cochlea via an electrode array comprising a plurality of electrodes. The stimulation unit is configured to process the signals received by the inductive antenna to be usable for the electrodes of the electrode array. The electrode array is configured to apply the signals processed by the stimulation unit to the cochlea for the stimulation thereof. The energy harvesting apparatus is connected to the stimulation unit or to the electrode array, and is configured to harvest energy based on at least one of thermal, biochemical, biophysical, and mechanical processes/phenomena pertaining to the cochlea, and is configured to provide harvested energy to the stimulation unit or the electrode array, respectively.

Self-powered electrode array

According to an embodiment, a cochlear implant system is disclosed. The system includes an input unit, a filterbank, a processing unit and an implant. The input unit is configured to provide a first electrical signal from a first sound source and a second electrical signal from a second sound source. The filterbank is configured to filter the first electrical signal into a plurality of first band limited signals and the second electrical signal into a plurality of second band limited signals. The processing unit is configured to generate a primary pulse pattern based on a first band selected from the plurality of first band limited signals and to generate a secondary pulse pattern based on a second band selected from the plurality of second band limited signals, the first band and the second band being defined by same or substantially overlapping frequency ranges and the implant is configured to receive the primary pulse pattern and the secondary pulse pattern from the processing unit. The primary pulse pattern is configured to stimulate a cochlea of a user of the cochlear implant system during a first time slot, and the secondary pulse pattern is configured to stimulate the cochlea of the user of the cochlear implant system during a second time slot. The first time slot and the second time slot are sequential time slots.

Cochlear implant system for processing multiple sound source information

According to an embodiment, a method for producing stimulation pulses in a bilateral cochlear implant (CI) is disclosed. The method includes receiving a sound at a first microphone or a first microphone array positioned at or in the vicinity of a first ear of a user of the bilateral CI and receiving the sound at a second microphone or a second microphone array positioned at or in the vicinity of a second ear of the user of the bilateral CI. Furthermore, generating, using the first microphone or first microphone array, a first microphone signal in response to the sound received at the first microphone or first microphone array and generating, using the second microphone or second microphone array, a second microphone signal in response to the sound received at the second microphone or second microphone array. This is followed by filtering the first microphone signal into a plurality of band limited first microphone signals and a filtering the second microphone signals into a plurality of band limited second microphone signals. Later, determining a major sound based on analysis of the first microphone signal and/or the second microphone signal and/or at least one of the plurality of band limited first microphone signals and/or at least one of the plurality of band limited second microphone signals and extracting direction of arrival of the major sound. Based on the determined major source, a primary pulse pattern is generated and a secondary pulse pattern comprising for example a delayed and/or attenuated copy of the generated primary pulse pattern is then generated. The amount of delay and/or attenuation is based on the extracted direction of arrival. Finally, stimulating one cochlea using a primary stimulation pulse that is based on the primary pulse pattern and stimulating the other cochlea using a secondary stimulation pulse that is based on the secondary pulse pattern.

Sound processing for a bilateral cochlear implant system

According to an embodiment, an auditory device for generating an electrode stimulation signal is disclosed. The device includes a filter bank configured to filter an incoming audio signal into a plurality of band pass limited audio signals, each band pass limited audio signal relating to an audio frequency band. The device further includes a processor configured to extract an onset time for firing an electrode in accordance with rate of change of a band pass limited audio signal and/or a derived band pass limited audio signal satisfying a predetermined criterion, and a signal generator for generating the electrode stimulation signal for the electrode corresponding to the band pass limited audio signal and/or derived band pass limited audio signal in accordance with the determined onset time. The device includes a plurality of implantable stimulation electrodes configured to deliver the electrode stimulation signal to a region of cochlea.

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Vallauris, France

Bradford Backus