The stapedius reflex: Processing its neuronal activity with a small embedded system

Cochlear implants require a first calibration, which is usually done during surgery. This calibration is normally based on the inspection of the stapedius reflex, which is the contraction of a very tiny muscle in the inner ear. Even though being state-of-the-art, this visual inspection is limited and error prone due to various reasons. This paper proposes a small embedded system that automatically processes the action potentials of the stapedius muscle. Among other things, this process also signals the appearance of the stapedius reflex. Since particular emphasis is to keep computational demands as low as possible, the developed system may be integrated into future version of the implant´s speech processor.