Physician's testing system and method for testing implantable cochlear stimulator

摘要

A physician's tester provides for physician monitoring and control of an implantable human tissue stimulator system, such as an implantable cochlear stimulator (ICS) system. During normal operation, the tissue stimulator system includes an implantable stimulator and a wearable processor (WP). The physician's tester is designed around a microprocessor, and is basically a modification of the WP. The tester provides control over the selection of voltages and currents to be measured and the presetting of parameters in the implantable stimulator during testing of the implanted stimulator and/or a patient's response to data transmitted by the WP/tester to the implanted stimulator. The physician's testor is portable and utilizes telemetry coupling with the implanted stimulator to provide communication between the tester and stimulator for the monitoring, control and measurement of the stimulator parameters. The tester resides in a portable housing having a control panel and a visual display. The control panel allows the physician to manually set various parameter levels. The visual display provides alpha numeric data for viewing. Various devices, such as additional displays and/or a printer, may be coupled to the tester through a display port and/or an infrared serial output port in order to permit a print out of the displayed data or other information.