Designing a bionic voice source
Bionic voice is an electronic prosthesis for patients who have lost the functionality of their larynx in generating voice. Despite the emerging progress in many fields of bionics, developing a Bionic Voice prosthesis for these patients has been out of reach until recently. Hence, these patients lived to suffer a lifelong voice disability after surgical removal or bypass of the larynx.
Bionic Voice prosthesis is controlled by a combination of neural drive of the missing larynx and respiration. The generated voice is transferred wirelessly to an intra-oral voice source.
The team at BENS group, MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University are at a very exciting moment in their research of Bionic Voice design. After many years of research we are now proud to be the pioneering team in Australian Universities who have invented a solution, which can replace the existing gold standard of TE voice for these patients. Our design is currently being verified through pre-clinical trials on adult laryngectomy patients in Sydney and also through an international collaboration in Singapore General Hospital. The research is supported by a team of world leaders in neuromorphic engineering for electronic design of the prosthesis at MARCS institute. We are also the only project team globally supported by an official collaboration with world leading surgeons at the University college of London for surgical trials of the solution. The research has been supported since 2013 by the Garnette Passe, the largest private funding body in the ENT field in Australia with A$ 650,000. This talk a review of our latest achievements at BENS and the research mindset behind Bionic Voice development, as inspired by a man, a monkey and an ant.
About Farzaneh Ahmadi
Dr Farzaneh Ahmadi is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Bioelectronics and Neuroscience (BENS) group in The MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University. She is a PhD graduate of Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in Biomedical Engineering.In 2013, Farzaneh managed to establish Bionic Voice research for the first time in Australia with the invaluable support of the Garnette Passe and Rodney Williams Memorial Foundation at the university of Sydney. In December 2014, she seized the opportunity of positioning the Bionic Voice research in a prominent research group in neural engineering and Bionics in Australia: BENS group at MARCS. For this, she has been awarded a prestigious four years Research Fellowship by the Garnett Passé to continue developing Bionic Voice in BENS. The Bionic Voice research of her fellowship is supported by official collaboration between MARCS and the University College of London (UCL).