Susan Voss
Smith College, MA·Biomedical Engineering
A quick, painless sound test played into the ear canal could show what is wrong in the middle ear. That includes fluid behind the eardrum, a broken or stiffened chain of the tiny ear bones, or changes caused by pressure inside the skull.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
wideband acoustic immittance
absorbance
power reflectance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Expand and update the online wideband acoustic immittance database, now over 9,900 subjects from 41 studies, to define normal measurements and show how specific middle-ear diseases change them.
- Set criteria for valid WAI measurements through controlled lab experiments that systematically vary acoustic leaks and probe placement along the ear canal.
- Train machine-learning models on database measurements to separate normal from abnormal ears and ultimately classify specific conditions such as middle-ear fluid or fixed ear bones.
More about the research
This family of tests is called wideband acoustic immittance (WAI). It measures how sound is absorbed and reflected by the ear, using quantities such as absorbance, power reflectance and impedance. WAI may detect fluid in newborns and young infants, whose ears the standard test, tympanometry, often handles poorly. Early diagnosis in these babies can be critical to normal speech and language development.
Why it matters
Wideband acoustic immittance could give clinicians a simple, noninvasive way to find the cause of hearing loss in patients of any age. In newborns and infants, it could catch middle-ear fluid early enough to protect speech and language development. It could also distinguish causes of conductive hearing loss, such as fluid versus fixed or detached ear bones, and help monitor pressure inside the skull.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jian Zhou
Binghamton University, NY·Engineering
Engineer a mechanical sensing element inspired by the orb-weaving spider's web that detects acoustic particle velocity, the air motion carried by sound, with near-maximum mechanical sensitivity and ultra-low thermomechanical noise.
Stephen Boppart
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether adding optical coherence tomography, a light-based imaging method that sees behind the eardrum, to standard pneumatic otoscopy improves diagnostic accuracy and reduces antibiotic prescriptions in children presenting to primary care with ear pain or suspected otitis media.
Karl Grosh
University of Michigan, MI·Biomedical Engineering
Design and fabricate a multi-resonant piezoelectric MEMS accelerometer co-designed with an application-specific integrated circuit, and reach a 5-milligram packaged implantable sound sensor using flip-chip packaging that eliminates printed circuit board mounting.
The school
Smith College: 4 labs on PI Pages, $7M a year on research, 5 research doctorates a year.
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