Vibration of the human tympanic membrane measured with OCT in a range between 0.4 kHz and 6.4 kHz on an ex vivo sample

Research output: Contribution to book/conference proceedings/anthology/reportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Vibrations of the tympanic membrane (TM) play a key role for the transmission of sound to the inner ear. Today, there exist still problems in measuring the movement of the TM and there are unresolved issues in understanding the TM and its behavior. A non-invasive and contact-free in vivo investigation of the structure and the functional behavior of the TM would be a big step forward. In the presented study, the suitability of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for measuring the oscillation patterns of the TM in the frequency range covering the range of the human speech perception should be tested. For functional imaging a sound chirp was generated in the frequency range between 0.4 kHz - 6.4 kHz. To obtain the movement within a sufficient resolution, a grid of 25 x 25 measurement points was generated over the whole TM. The information of the oscillatory movement was encoded in the Doppler signal, provided by M-scans at several points of the TM. The frequency response functions of each frequency showed different oscillation patterns on the TM. The acquisition time of one single M-scan was only 8.5 ms and of the entire TM 5.3 s, emphasizing the potential of the method for future in vivo applications. Furthermore, the morphology was acquired with the same OCT-system, showing the feasibility for structural imaging and differentiation between typical regions of the TM. Thus, OCT was shown as a suitable method for the simultaneous measurement of the functional and structural behavior of the TM.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHead and Neck Optical Diagnostics
Chapter880507
Number of pages4
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Peer-reviewedYes

Publication series

SeriesProceedings of SPIE
Volume8805
ISSN0277-786X

External IDs

WOS 000325415700007
Scopus 84883867036
ORCID /0000-0002-3061-0171/work/142241356
ORCID /0000-0003-0554-2178/work/142249872
ORCID /0009-0008-7642-8608/work/142255324
ORCID /0000-0003-3894-1175/work/148603740

Keywords

Keywords

  • Doppler, Optical coherence tomography, Tympanic membrane, Vibration