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3D printed biomimetic cochleae and machine learning co-modelling provides clinical informatics for cochlear implant patients.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Lei, Iek Man 
Jiang, Chen 
de Rijk, Simone Rosalie  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7962-5473

Abstract

Cochlear implants restore hearing in patients with severe to profound deafness by delivering electrical stimuli inside the cochlea. Understanding stimulus current spread, and how it correlates to patient-dependent factors, is hampered by the poor accessibility of the inner ear and by the lack of clinically-relevant in vitro, in vivo or in silico models. Here, we present 3D printing-neural network co-modelling for interpreting electric field imaging profiles of cochlear implant patients. With tuneable electro-anatomy, the 3D printed cochleae can replicate clinical scenarios of electric field imaging profiles at the off-stimuli positions. The co-modelling framework demonstrated autonomous and robust predictions of patient profiles or cochlear geometry, unfolded the electro-anatomical factors causing current spread, assisted on-demand printing for implant testing, and inferred patients' in vivo cochlear tissue resistivity (estimated mean = 6.6 kΩcm). We anticipate our framework will facilitate physical modelling and digital twin innovations for neuromodulation implants.

Description

Keywords

Biomimetic Materials, Cochlea, Cochlear Implantation, Cochlear Implants, Dielectric Spectroscopy, Humans, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Computer, Precision Medicine, Printing, Three-Dimensional, Reproducibility of Results, X-Ray Microtomography

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

12

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (204845/Z/16/Z)
European Research Council (758865)