A neural implant ASIC for the restoration of balance in individuals with vestibular dysfunction

Abstract

Abstract-This paper describes an ASIC developed as part of a neural prosthesis to restore balance to individuals with a dysfunctional vestibular end-organ. The device interfaces with inertia sensors; sensing acceleration in five degrees of freedom (three radial and two linear axis), and then conditions, processes and converts the signals to provide the artificial stimulus to the vestibulocochlear nerve. The IC described herein has been realised as part of a board-level solution, also including the sensors, power source and DC blocking capacitors. It is envisaged that this can be later implemented in a System-in-Package (SiP) form to provide a totally implantable solution. We describe the design and implementation of the integrated circuit in a standard 0.35μm CMOS technology.

A Field-Programmable Analog Array Development Platform for Vestibular Prosthesis Signal Processing

“…We estimate that when bias voltages are generated on-chip, less than 20 μW will be consumed for a single canal system. As a comparison, Constandinou et al predict a power consumption value of 48.84 μW, based on the simulation results of their semicircular canal processor ASIC [9]. Thus with respect to power the FPAA approach is attractive.…”

“…Parallel to vestibular prostheses, low-power signal processing approaches for cochlear prostheses explore analog signal processing [24], [25]. Furthermore, while a custom ASIC yields a smaller footprint of ~1 mm 2 [9], than the RASP 2.8 FPAA of ~166 cm 2 , the option for reconfigurability is advantageous. Serving as a development platform, an FPAA enables rapid revision of encoding schemes during testing in animal models.…”

Feature extraction using first and second derivative extrema (FSDE) for real-time and hardware-efficient spike sorting

“…Neural prostheses (or neuroprosthetics) have already demonstrated a significant impact to individuals with damage/dysfunction to sensory and 'cognitive' pathways (Humayun et al, 2003;Georgiou and Toumazou, 2005;Perlmutter and Mink, 2006;Constandinou et al, 2008Constandinou et al, , 2009). For example, cochlear implants, deep brain stimulation devices and more recently, vagus nerve stimulation therapy are now in use in over 350,000 individuals.…”

An energy-efficient, dynamic voltage scaling neural stimulator for a proprioceptive prosthesis

“…I N recent years there have been exciting demonstrations of the potential benefits offered by electrical neural stimulators in a wide variety of applications such as vision and vestibular prostheses [1]- [4]. Cochlear implants remain the main commercial success to date [5]- [7], but there are a wealth of sensory and motor rehabilitation applications that are showing rapid progress.…”