What can a skull simulator be used for?

The skull simulator is a mechanism for checking bone anchored hearing devices in a Hearing Instrument Test (HIT) box.

Traditional HIT measurements are performed for air conduction hearing aids and do not provide the necessary stimulation or coupling mechanism required for a bone anchored hearing devices.

The skull simulator allows you to connect a bone anchored hearing device, e.g. Oticon Medical Ponto devices, to an accelerometer (skull simulator). This provides the correct coupling mechanism and vibratory stimulation that is required to test a bone anchored device within a HIT chamber.

Outcome measures are similar to those in air conduction HIT measurements and include; battery drain, frequency response, harmonic distortion, peak responses and equivalent noise input.

References and caveats
The skull simulator requires the Interacoustics Affinity instrument with HIT and SKS, licenses and hardware.