<title>Laser Doppler vibrometry: new ENT applications</title>

Abstract

Common audiometry often does not really allow a reliable and objective differential diagnosis of hearing disorders such as otosclerosis, adhesive otitis, ossicular interruption or tinnitus, even though several methods might be used complementarily. In recent years, some experimental studies on middle ear mechanics established laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) as a useful method allowing objective measurement of human tyinpanic membrane displacement.The present study on LDV investigated the clinical use of this new method under physiological conditions. LDV proved to be a fast, reproducible, non-invasive and very sensitive instrument to characterize ear-drum vibrations in various middle ear dysfunctions, except in tinnitus patients. For future applications, improved optical characteristics of the vibrometer might result in a better differential diagnosis of subjective and objective tinnitus, otoacoustic emissions or Morbus Ménière.

Clinical application of laser Doppler vibrometry

“…Since the clinical results had been presented in more detail in an earlier paper [5], only a brief description is given here. The goal of the clinical studies was to find specific features or differences in the frequency dependent displacement function of the umbo of persons with middle ear deceases compared to healthy persons.…”