ACE Strategy with Virtual Channels

Cochlear implant is an electronic device, which can mediate hearing sensations to profoundly deaf people. Contemporary cochlear implants are sophisticated elec- tronic devices; however, their performance could still be improved. This paper describes an experiment we made in that direc- tion: additional 21 virtual channels were implemented by sequential stimulation of adjacent intracochlear elec- trodes, and the ACE strategy with virtual channels (ACEv, Advanced Combination Encoder strategy with virtual channels) for the Nucleus® 24 Cochlear Implant System was created and verified in a clinical test with four patients.