Robotic assisted multi-sensor access for cochlear diagnostics and therapies

For decades, interventions inside the human cochlea, the hearing organ, have been avoided due to the associated high risk of complete function loss, i.e. deafness, with the exception of inserting a cochlear implant electrode array to restore hearing functionality. CHARIOT pledges to improve the quality of care in deafness by developing a unique multi-sensor-guided robotic insertion tool that allows precise atraumatic access in the cochlea. A new platform for repetitive cochlear instrument positioning will scan the cochlea through real-time OCT and impedance sensing. Such combined technology will allow us to navigate and observe inside the cochlea in an unprecedented way. It will bootstrap emerging end-organ treatment such as gene and molecular treatment to encompass current treatments of partially functional hearing epithelium. A multidisciplinary team of physicians and scientists play a central role in the development and validation of intracochlear diagnostics with optical biopsy and in the development of a safe atraumatic insertion tool for cochlear therapies within UZ Leuven.

Keywords:Deafness, Multi-sensing impedance, Optical Coherence Tomography, Cochlear Implant, Cochlear diagnostics, Robotics

Disciplines:Sensing, estimation and actuating, Biosensors, Audiology, Otology