Investigation into cochlear implant processing strategies and simulations

Rotteveel, Floris (2018) Investigation into cochlear implant processing strategies and simulations. Bachelor's Thesis, Life Science and Technology.

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Abstract

The main cause of hearing loss is the irreversible diminishing of functional inner and outer hair cells. The function of the cochlear implant (CI) is to bypass the destroyed hair cells and directly stimulate the auditory nerve at the right tonotopical locations. Cochlear implants are the most used neural implant to date. CI’s directly stimulate the neurons of the auditory nerve inside the cochlea. Processing strategies, performed by the processor outside of the skull, are the methods of translating acoustic sounds into electrical signals used for stimulation. More recent strategies use novel features in coding to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and frequency resolution. While general aspects of cochlear implant processors are publicly known, the manufacturers do not release detailed information about the coding strategies used. As the coding strategies become more complex, it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the output of the implant and how acoustic sounds are represented through the implant. Therefore, it is important to create an experimental setup on which input and output of CI’s can be related to each other. The Nucleus MATLAB toolbox (NMT), by Cochlear Corp., allows the simulation of the Cochlear Nucleus cochlear implant. An investigation into the workings of NMT was conducted, and more light has been shed on the operations of this cochlear implant simulation. From the electrodograms plotted by NMT, the parameters of frequency allocation map and current levels as a function of sound pressure levels for targeted and adjacent channels can be extracted for a processing strategy. This report was written as a preparation for the design of an experimental setup to investigate the parameters of modern processing strategies.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Maat, A.
Degree programme:	Life Science and Technology
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	30 Aug 2018
Last Modified:	06 Sep 2018 14:06
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/18468

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