Ultra-high speed holographic shape and displacement measurements in the hearing sciences

The auditory system of mammals enables the perception of sound from our surrounding world.Containing some of the smallest bones in the body,the ear transduces complex acoustic signals with high-temporal sensitivity to complex mechanical vibrations with magnitudes as small as tens of picometers.Measurements of the shape and acoustically induced motions of different components of the ear are essential if we are to expand our understanding of hearing mechanisms,and also provide quantitative information for the development of numerical ear models that can be used to improve hearing protection,clinical diagnosis,and repair of damaged or diseased ears.We are developing digital holographic methods and instrumentation using an ultra-high speed camera to measure shape and acoustically-induced motions in the middle ear.Specifically we study the eardrum,the first structure of the middle ear which initializes the acoustic-mechanical transduction of sound for hearing.Our measurement system is capable of performing holographic measurement at rates up to 2.1 M frames per second.Two shape measurement modalities had previously been implemented into our holographic systems:(1)a multi-wavelength method with a wavelength tunable laser;and(2)a multi-angle illumination method with a single wavelength laser.In this paper,we present a third method using a miniaturized fringe projection system with a microelectromechanical system(MEMS)mirror.Further,we optimize the processing of large data sets of holographic displacement measurements using a vectorized Pearson's correlation algorithm.We validate and compare the shape and displacement measurements of our methodologies using a National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST)traceable gauge and sound-activated latex membranes and human eardrums.