Experimental Study of the Middle Ear Biological Support Structures

During the last few years, the effort for a better understanding of biological systems from a structural and physiological perspective, lead to the appearance of several scientific works concerning the biomechanical study and modeling of different human, and also animal structures. Biological systems are in general, the assembly of a given number of distinguishable components. In this context, the middle ear can be modeled as a mechanical system composed by several linked elements [

1

] (ossicles-Stirrup, Anvil and Hammer, and Eardrum).

The simulation’s accuracy rely on the material parameters that are fed to the numerical approximation method (ex. FEM, BEM,...). The material parameters however, can only be obtained by a direct or indirect [

2

] measurement procedure, otherwise, the simulations may lead to results widely away from the physiological reality of the system in focus.

In previous studies of the middle ear [

3

], the mechanical properties have been established and used in linear behavior context, assumption that is questionable due to widely common nonlinearity of biological materials [

4

].

The authors propose in this paper a experimental approach for the determination of the mechanical properties of middle ear’s support structures. This procedure assumes from a starting point the (possible) nonlinearity of these structures, which is an important step to increase the accuracy of the mechanical simulations, and ultimately may lead to a better understanding of middle ear’s physiology.