Clinical Programming Software to Evaluate Auditory Performance in Cochlear Implant Patients using Smartphone

Abstract

Cochlear Implant (CI) system is an auditory prosthesis that provides the perception of hearing sensation to the sensorineural deafened people by surgically implanting and electrically stimulating the auditory nerve. Four to six weeks after surgical implantation of CI, audiologist activates the implant and systematically stimulates the auditory nerve through dedicated software usually called ‘clinical programming software (CPS)’, to fine tune the electrodes so that the patient perceives the sound. It is understood that every cochlear implanted child needs to visit the audiologist periodically up to an age of 18 to undergo routine evaluations. This paper presents a new smartphone-based CPS developed to address the requirements of audiologist with attended advantages to the patients to carry CPS with previous history of stimulated values commonly referred as ‘MAP’ in CI programming. Besides, it provides flexibility to the patient by especially in the case of emergency or visiting nearest doctor for creating a new MAP or attend for routine evaluations, which is not the case provided by the contemporary CI manufacturers.The Smartphone-based CI Programme (SCIP) was developed using Android Studio IDE. SCIP assists audiologist to perform audiological evaluations such as (i) finding electrode status (Active, Short or Open), (ii) impedance measurement, (iii) fine tuning of, threshold and maximum audible level values for each electrode and (iv) updating the speech processor with the fine tuned values. The performance of SCIP software application was validated against a standard Electrode Impedance Tester device during in vitro testing of the developed Indian cochlear implant prosthesis, which is expected to undergo human clinical trials soon.