All-Optical Cochlear Implants
Stylianos E. Trevlakis, Alexandros-Apostolos A. Boulogeorgos, Nestor, D. Chatzidiamantis, and George K. Karagiannidis

TL;DR
This paper introduces an innovative all-optical cochlear implant architecture that directly converts sound into optical signals to stimulate cochlear neurons, with detailed modeling, analysis, and safety considerations.
Contribution
It presents a novel all-optical cochlear implant design, including system modeling, link-budget analysis, and key performance indicators, demonstrating feasibility and safety improvements over traditional implants.
Findings
Feasibility of the AOCI architecture confirmed through simulations.
Derived closed-form expressions for photon flux at cochlear neurons.
Identified an optimal balance between optical power and patient safety.
Abstract
In the present work, we introduce a novel cochlear implant (CI) architecture, namely all-optical CI (AOCI), which directly converts acoustic to optical signals capable of stimulating the cochlear neurons. First, we describe the building-blocks (BBs) of the AOCI, and explain their functionalities as well as their interconnections. Next, we present a comprehensive system model that incorporates the technical characteristics and constraints of each BB, the transdermal-optical-channel particularities, i.e. optical path-loss and external-implanted device stochastic pointing-errors, and the cochlear neurons biological properties. Additionally, in order to prove the feasibility of the AOCI architecture, we conduct a link-budget analysis that outputs novel closed-form expressions for the instantaneous and average photon flux that is emitted on the cochlear neurons. Likewise, we define three new…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAdvanced Optical Sensing Technologies · Photonic and Optical Devices · Optical and Acousto-Optic Technologies
