Implex Corporation

Hortmann Gmbh

Guenter Hortmann

Hans Leysieffer

Joachim W Baumann

Klaus Kunick

Charging system for implantable hearing aids and tinnitus maskers with a repeatedly rechargeable direct voltage source. The charging system comprises an implantable receiving resonant circuit as the electrical energy source for the direct voltage source to be charged and a transmitting resonant circuit located outside the body that can be inductively coupled with the receiving resonant circuit for power transmission from outside the body to inside the body. Embodiments are provided for transcutaneous and for percutaneous power transmission between the implantable receiving resonant circuit and the external transmitting resonant circuit.

Charging system for implantable hearing aids and tinnitus maskers

Electromechanical transducer for implantable hearing aids. The transducer has a hermetically sealed and biocompatible housing, in which a wall is designed as a membrane that can oscillate, and which forms a heteromorphic connecting element together with a piezoelectric ceramic disk. Mechanical oscillations of the housing membrane are coupled to the middle ear or inner ear of the user by a mechanically rigid element attached in the central area of the membrane. This element is configured as a bow, so that in positioning the transducer housing from the direction of the mastoid adjoining the tympanic cavity, it acts as an artificial anvil to which coupling elements can be attached for mechanically transmitting oscillations of this artificial ossicle to the inner ear. Various coupling elements can be used, which correspond to the respective individual pathological situation. The application of the entire transducer system can be performed the operating surgeon having an unobstructed view, without extensive, space-creating interventions in the anatomical conditions of the middle ear.

Electromechanical transducer for implantable hearing aids

A multi-frequency transmission system for implanted hearing aid includes an external transmitting part and an encapsuled receiver part implantable into middle ear of the user. The transmitting part includes a microphone, a speech processor including a set of audio frequency band pass filters connected respectively via adjustable threshold switches to pulse shapers which release an audio frequency band only when an adjusted threshold level is exceeded. A plurality of high frequency transmitters is modulated by the signals from the pulse shapers. A pair of additional high frequency transmitters is controlled by the pulses from the speech processor to alternately transmit high frequency pulses corresponding to the polarity of the triggering pulses. A frequency channel selector is connected between the transmitters and the speech processor to activate simultaneously one of the transmitters from the bipolar high frequency stage and one of the amplitude modulated transmitters. The combined signal is applied to a transmitting coil and received by a receiver unit implanted in user's ear. The receiver includes a plurality of resonant circuits assigned to respective high frequency transmitters and a pair of switching transistors of opposite type of conductivity which are power supplied by a portion of a rectified high frequency signal and control the polarity of the excitation signal applied to the implanted electrodes.

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Neckartenzlingen, Germany

Guenter Hortmann