Age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) is prevalent and multifactorial, but current clinical tools cannot precisely differentiate between the underlying cochlear pathologies (e.g., sensory vs. metabolic loss). There is also a scarcity of non-invasive, quantitative methods to estimate the extent and location of hair cell loss in living patients, limiting personalized treatment and research into hearing loss mechanisms. Moreover, existing models often fail to accurately predict individual audiograms from histopathological data or vice versa, hampering the translation of research insights into clinical diagnostics.

Technology Description
The new model is a nonlinear, time-domain computational model of the human cochlea that simulates auditory threshold shifts as a function of hair cell (OHC and IHC) loss along the cochlear partition. The model enables both the prediction of audiograms from measured postmortem hair cell survival data, and the estimation of hair cell survival profiles directly from a patient’s audiogram. The approach was validated using a unique dataset of paired audiograms and postmortem hair cell counts, demonstrating high accuracy, especially at low frequencies.

Potential Applications

• Diagnosis: Non-invasively estimate the extent and distribution of cochlear hair cell loss in patients with hearing loss, aiding differential diagnosis and personalized treatment planning.
• Hearing Aid & Cochlear implant fitting: informing device programming by identifying the specific nature and location of cochlear damage, potentially improving patient outcomes.
• Pharmaceutical Trials: Stratify and monitor participants in clinical trials of otoprotective or regenerative therapies by providing a quantitative biomarker of hair cell survival.
• Research Tool: advance basic research into the mechanisms of hearing loss by enabling detailed in vivo phenotyping of cochlear pathology from standard audiometric data.
• Epidemiological Studies: facilitate large-scale studies on the prevalence and patterns of cochlear cell loss in aging populations.

Value Proposition
This technology addresses a critical gap in hearing health by providing a validated, biophysically grounded framework for estimating cochlear hair cell loss from routinely gathered data, with broad applications in diagnosis, treatment, and research