Handheld Dry Electrode for the Rapid Measurement of Surface Potentials in Cochlear Implant Patients (2006)
Undergraduates: Vidya Goli, Punita Christopher
Faculty Advisor: Charles Finley
Department: Applied Sciences
A cochlear implant is a medical device that passes electrical currents through an electrode array implanted into the inner ear or cochlea of profoundly deaf individuals to stimulate the surviving auditory nerve fibers to help restore hearing. Although cochlear implants are generally reliable, they do at times fail. A "soft" failure refers to a situation where the device continues to deliver stimuli in response to input commands, but incorrectly. A key goal of our work is to improve the ability to monitor cochlear implant function without requiring surgery. A "dry" electrode probe for measuring scalp potentials is being developed to achieve improvement of signal quality, reduction of motion artifact, and added convenience relative to an earlier prototype probe, which used "wet" electrode technology. The method will allow for improved precision relative to the current method of mapping surface potentials and increase overall mapping sensitivity in identifying "soft failures. "