MedTrace Logo

Wide-Bandwidth Open Canal Hearing Aid For Better Multitalker Speech Understanding

NCT00582946 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: PHASE1 · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 16

Last updated 2016-11-04

Study results available
· View outcomes & findings →

Summary

Our goal is to design and build a new hearing aid system, which mitigates the most common complaints that hearing aid users have. These include hearing in multi-talker situations, poor sound quality, unwanted whistling resulting from feedback, and a dislike of the sound of their own voice. Current efforts, with limited success, use signal processing methods rather than restoring more closely the normal auditory function. We plan to achieve our goal by reducing to practice three key enabling concepts. The first is to replace the current acoustic transducer with a non-acoustic mechanical output transducer that directly actuates the tympanic membrane (TM). This transducer, called the EarLens, floats on the tympanic membrane in a manner similar to the way a contract lens floats on the eye. The second is to increase the output bandwidth of the hearing aid. The third key concept is to place a wide-bandwidth microphone in the ear canal to capture the pinna diffraction cues similarly to the way the normal ear functions. Our central hypothesis is that a hearing aid that delivers amplified wide-bandwidth mechanical stimuli, directionally dependent cues, in an open canal configuration will perform better than conventional hearing aids when there are competing talkers in the background. First phase includes verification the capability of the system to deliver sufficient maximum equivalent pressure output (MEPO) to treat the degree of hearing loss in the target fitting range.

Conditions

Interventions

DEVICE

Hearing Aid

Subjects were treated with a hearing aid which provided amplification intended to treat mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

    collaborator NIH

  • EarLens Corporation

    lead INDUSTRY

Principal Investigators

  • Sunil Puria · Ear Lens Corporation

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
21 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2006-05-31
Primary Completion
2009-12-31
Completion
2009-12-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00582946 on ClinicalTrials.gov