Abstract
A hearing aid is an essential device to maintain the quality of life for people with hard of hearing or suffering from hearing loss. The ear mould is an indispensable component of a hearing aid. An ear impression of the patient’s ear is required to fabricate the ear mound and is typically taken by an audiologist. The traditional method of obtaining an ear impression involves an audiologist preparing a silicone-based material and injecting the material into a patient’s ear. This method, though considered minimally invasive, causes discomfort to the patient, introduces a clinical risk, and is labour-intensive and time-consuming. The central research question that this work address is whether the experience of an ear impression process can be improved for both the patient and audiologist by introducing a digital methodology for hearing aid fitting. A comparison of different contactless scanning technologies determined that structured light scanning is the best-suited technology for directly scanning ears. Herein, I describe the development of a mould-less and contactless prototype structured light scanner that is optimised for scanning human ears for efficiently fitting hearing aids.