Estimation of the ear canal displacement field due to in-ear device insertion using a registration method on a human-like artificial ear

Passive and active in-ear devices (IED) occluding the ear canal are commonly used to (i) protect people from high noise levels (earplugs), (ii) assist people suffering from hearing impairment (hearing aids) or (iii) help people in listening from their sound systems (earbuds). However, the usability and/or efficiency of IEDs can be greatly affected by several discomfort components (physical, acoustical and functional). The mechanical pressure exerted by the IED onto the ear canal walls is greatly suspected to affect the aforementioned comfort components. This physical characteristic is closely related to the displacement field induced by the IED insertion, which has to be known for a better understanding of perceived discomfort. Thus, this paper proposes to validate a method based on medical images to estimate the displacement field of the ear canal walls due to the insertion of an IED. The approach is validated on a human-like artificial ear with canal geometry deformed using two custom molded IEDs with controlled shapes. These geometries are obtained using computed tomography imaging and the displacement field is computed using a registration method. The errors due to the ear canal segmentation and to the registration steps are small enough to compute a relevant estimation of the expected displacement field. Results show that the amplitude of the displacement and its location into the ear canal can be evaluated with an accuracy of ± 0.2 mm and ± 0.4 mm respectively. Preliminary results on images with a degraded resolution indicate that the proposed approach used to assess the displacement field of the ear canal walls using computed tomography images could be applied on magnetic resonance images, which is a preferred method to image human subject ear canals for future investigations.