Introduction

A hearing aid is an electroacoustic body worn apparatus which typically

fits in or behind the wearer's ear, and is designed to amplify and
modulate sounds for the wearer. Earlier devices, known as an "ear
trumpet" or "ear horn"[1][2], were passive funnel-like amplification
cones designed to gather sound energy and direct it into the ear canal.
Similar devices include the bone anchored hearing aid, and cochlear
implant.

Construction
The hearing aid comprises a hemispherically shaped ornamental outer
shell that covers all of the components and circuitry of a conventional
hearing aid. The hearing aid components are housed inside a casing.

A hearing aid instrument of the in-the-ear type (and preferably CIC)

provides a plate member with electronic hearing aid components
mounted thereto. The plate member is preferably of a harder material
such as hard plastic. A soft polymeric body is bonded to the plate
member and encapsulates preferably a plurality of the electronic
hearing aid components. The body is soft and is shaped to conform to
the ear canal of the user. The soft polymeric body and encapsulated
electronic hearing aid components define a soft structure compliant to
the ear canal during use and that is substantially solid and free of void
spaces between at least some of the components and the ear canal. A
volume control knob, tone controls, battery access door and a rotatable
clasp or deflectable clip protrude from the rear surface of the casing.

Preferably, the hearing aid uses a rotatable clasp to mount to the

wearer's eyeglass frames or earlobe. In an alternative embodiment, the
hearing aid does not mount to the wearer's eyeglasses. In a first
preferred embodiment, a clasp secures the hearing aid to the wearer's
eyeglasses. In a second preferred embodiment, a clip mounts the
hearing aid to the wearer's eyeglass frames. In a third preferred
embodiment, a cable tie mounts the hearing aid to the eyeglass frames
through width adjustment slots in a projecting tab The outer shell gives
the hearing aid the appearance of an earring or an eyeglass tether
mount. The outer shell of my hearing aid may be quickly exchanged
with any of several other ornamental shells to give the earring or
eyeglass tether mount the desired coloration and shape.

PRINCIPLE
A hearing aid magnifies sound vibrations entering the ear. Surviving
hair cells detect the larger vibrations and convert them into neural
signals that are passed along to the brain. The greater the damage to a
person’s hair cells, the more severe the hearing loss, and the greater the
hearing aid amplification needed to make up the difference. A hearing
aid has three basic parts: a microphone, amplifier, and speaker. The
hearing aid receives sound through a microphone, which converts the
sound waves to electrical signals and sends them to an amplifier. The
amplifier increases the power of the signals and then sends them to the
ear through a speaker.

USES
How can hearing aids help?

Hearing aids are primarily useful in improving the hearing and speech
comprehension of people who have hearing loss that results from
damage to the small sensory cells in the inner ear, called hair cells. A
hearing aid is a small electronic device that you wear in or behind your
ear. It makes some sounds louder so that a person with hearing loss can
listen, communicate, and participate more fully in daily activities.

EXPECTATIONS
What should one expect from hearing aids?

Using hearing aids successfully takes time and patience. Hearing aids
will not restore normal hearing or eliminate background noise.
Adjusting to a hearing aid is a gradual process that involves learning to
listen in a variety of environments and becoming accustomed to hearing
different sounds. One should try to become familiar with hearing aids
under nonstressful circumstances a few hours at a time. Programmes
are available to help users master new listening techniques and develop
skills to manage hearing loss.
DRAWBACKS
However, there are practical limits to the amount of amplification a
hearing aid can provide. In addition, if the inner ear is too damaged,
even large vibrations will not be converted into neural signals. In this
situation, a hearing aid would be ineffective.

ULTRASONOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION
Diagnostic sonography (ultrasonography) is an ultrasound-based
diagnostic imaging technique used to visualize subcutaneous body
structures including tendons, muscles, joints, vessels and internal
organs for possible pathology or lesions. Obstetric sonography is
commonly used during pregnancy and is widely recognized by the
public. There are a plethora of diagnostic and therapeutic applications
practiced in medicine.

In physics the term "ultrasound" applies to all acoustic energy with a

frequency above human hearing (20,000 hertz or 20 kilohertz). Typical
diagnostic sonographic scanners operate in the frequency range of 2 to
18 megahertz, hundreds of times greater than the limit of human
hearing. The choice of frequency is a trade-off between spatial
resolution of the image and imaging depth: lower frequencies produce
less resolution but image deeper into the body.

PRINCIPLE
The creation of an image from sound is done in three steps - producing
a sound wave, receiving echoes, and interpreting those echoes.

[edit] Producing a sound wave

Medical sonographic instrument

A sound wave is typically produced by a piezoelectric transducer

encased in a probe. Strong, short electrical pulses from the ultrasound
machine make the transducer ring at the desired frequency. The
frequencies can be anywhere between 2 and 18 MHz. The sound is
focused either by the shape of the transducer, a lens in front of the
transducer, or a complex set of control pulses from the ultrasound
scanner machine. This focusing produces an arc-shaped sound wave
from the face of the transducer. The wave travels into the body and
comes into focus at a desired depth.

Older technology transducers focus their beam with physical lenses.

Newer technology transducers use phased array techniques to enable
the sonographic machine to change the direction and depth of focus.
Almost all piezoelectric transducers are made of ceramic.

Materials on the face of the transducer enable the sound to be

transmitted efficiently into the body (usually seeming to be a rubbery
coating, a form of impedance matching). In addition, a water-based gel
is placed between the patient's skin and the probe.
The sound wave is partially reflected from the layers between different
tissues. Specifically, sound is reflected anywhere there are density
changes in the body: e.g. blood cells in blood plasma, small structures in
organs, etc. Some of the reflections return to the transducer.

[edit] Receiving the echoes

The return of the sound wave to the transducer results in the same
process that it took to send the sound wave, except in reverse. The
return sound wave vibrates the transducer, the transducer turns the
vibrations into electrical pulses that travel to the ultrasonic scanner
where they are processed and transformed into a digital image.

[edit] Forming the image

The sonographic scanner must determine three things from each
received echo:

1. How long it took the echo to be received from when the sound was
transmitted.
2. From this the focal length for the phased array is deduced,
enabling a sharp image of that echo at that depth (this is not
possible while producing a sound wave).
3. How strong the echo was. It could be noted that sound wave is not
a click, but a pulse with a specific carrier frequency. Moving
objects change this frequency on reflection, so that it is only a
matter of electronics to have simultaneous Doppler sonography.

Once the ultrasonic scanner determines these three things, it can locate
which pixel in the image to light up and to what intensity and at what
hue if frequency is processed (see redshift for a natural mapping to
hue).

Transforming the received signal into a digital image may be explained

by using a blank spreadsheet as an analogy. We imagine our transducer
is a long, flat transducer at the top of the sheet. We will send pulses
down the 'columns' of our spreadsheet (A, B, C, etc.). We listen at each
column for any return echoes. When we hear an echo, we note how long
it took for the echo to return. The longer the wait, the deeper the row
(1,2,3, etc.). The strength of the echo determines the brightness setting
for that cell (white for a strong echo, black for a weak echo, and varying
shades of grey for everything in between.) When all the echoes are
recorded on the sheet, we have a greyscale image.

USES

Medical sonography is used in, for example:

• Cardiology;
• Endocrinology
• Gastroenterology
• Gynaecology

• Neurology; for assessing blood flow and stenoses in the carotid arteries and
the big intracerebral arteries;
• Obstetrics:- Obstetrical ultrasound is commonly used during pregnancy to
check on the development of the fetus.
• Ophthalmology;
• Urology, to determine the amount of fluid retained in a patient's
bladder.
• Musculoskeletal, tendons, muscles, nerves, and bone surfaces
• Intravascular ultrasound (e.g. ultrasound guided fluid aspiration,
fine needle aspiration, guided injections)
• Intervenional; biopsy, emptying fluids, intrauterine transfusion
(Hemolytic disease of the newborn)
• Contrast-enhanced ultrasound
• Ultrasonography are promising techniques to assess large-vessel
vasculitides.