"It's the total implantable hearing device," said Rong Gan, the Charles E. Foster Chair in Biomedical?Mechanical Engineering and associate professor of mechanical engineering.

What makes her device different from every other hearing aid, she explains, is the microphone and sound processor would be inserted beneath the skin, directly behind the ear.

"So the sound comes here, through the skin," Gan said while pointing at a drawing copied with this article, "and then received by the microphone, changing into an electric signal and then transferred into the coil and the coil drives the (implant) magnet."

A 11?2 millimeter spacer separates the coil from the electromagnetic implant.

Gan said the system is designed to help people with moderate sensory hearing loss, the gradual kind that affects older people and those exposed to loud noise over an extended period of time. The electromagnetic implant drives more force to the inner ear, which allows the cochlea to pick up sound that had been missing.

By contrast, conductive hearing loss occurs by a block to the eardrum.

Gan said several large companies are trying to develop a successful implantable microphone. Working with student researchers, Gan led a group that studied their prototypes, but all had flaws.

With funding help from OCAST (Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology), Gan started work on her own totally implantable design in 2002. One year before that, the Food and Drug Administration approved a Gan-designed partial-implant device.

Her newest system is similar to standard hearing aids with external microphones. A titanium cover shields the inside of the skin from the internal microphone and sound processor.

Gan said compared to her partial implant, the latest design is smaller, more powerful and uses less battery power.

"We have the prototype, we have experiment results," she said. "But currently we are looking for a company who will help us improve the manufacture part. That is the current situation."

She's getting help from the OU Office of Technology Development, a division that helps university researchers bring their discoveries to the commercial market.

Though Gan is sure she's onto something, a few concerns remain. They include fine tuning an external remote control to moderate the internal system's radio frequency and perfecting a very long-lasting implant battery.

Gan is encouraged by her prototype, but she describes it as homemade. Finding a company to work with will enable her to raise the system's sophistication because "you must have a good product to market to be successful."

"So right now," Gan said, "I really want to have some industry people interested in this area to join in and we will figure out how to make the device with manufactured high quality."

Gan has a background in biomedical engineering, though her early work involved the cardiovascular system. She also studied tissue mechanics and blood vessels until 1995, when she moved from Albuquerque, N.M., to Oklahoma City to work at the former Central Oklahoma Ear Institute.

She developed her partial implant system while working there, and joined the OU faculty in 1999. The total implant system has her even more excited.

"I love this project because it benefits human beings," Gan said. "Of course, we do basic research, but this is applied biomechanics and using your knowledge and skill to help people's hearing."

By The Norman Transcript
http://www.normantranscript.com/localnews/local_story_358012101?keyword=topstory