A Binghamton University-led team is using bio-inspired flow microphone technology — modeled on how spiders sense sound through their webs — to develop a dual-sensing ear canal probe designed to detect otoacoustic emissions with greater accuracy and reliability.
A five-year, $1.84 million National Institutes of Health grant will fund the development of a novel dual-sensing ear canal probe that combines particle velocity sensing with traditional acoustic-pressure detection to improve the measurement of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) — a key diagnostic tool in audiology.
The project is led by Jian Zhou, PhD, assistant professor at Binghamton University‘s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, with co-investigators Distinguished Professor Ronald Miles of Binghamton University and Professor Christopher Shera of the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
The probe builds on patented sensing technology developed by Miles and Zhou, inspired by research into how spiders detect sound through their webs. While earning his doctorate at Binghamton in New York, Zhou observed a spiderweb moving in the breeze during a walk through the university’s Nature Preserve, which led him to explore whether a thin, flexible structure — similar to spider silk — could be used to detect particle velocity in sound waves.
“Flow microphones have so many potential uses,” says Zhou, in a release. “Rethinking it as a medical device could help millions of people with hearing impairment around the world receive better diagnosis and provide valuable feedback for treatment.”
How It Works
Conventional microphones detect sound pressure, but the Binghamton team’s approach targets a different physical property of sound: the movement of air particles. Their bio-inspired flow microphone responds to sound with high fidelity across a frequency range of 1 Hz to 50 kHz — broader than conventional pressure-based microphones — and with a flatter frequency response.
“One of my obsessions has been that you don’t need to hear pressure in order to detect sound. You could detect the motion of the air,” says Miles, in a release. “Both things are the sound, but the microphones that we make and use now are all modeled after human ears, because humans are arrogant animals and we make everything work like us. The truth is, most animals don’t hear sound that way at all — they hear the motion of the air.”
Although the current probe technology no longer relies on harvesting actual spider silk, the researchers have refined the approach using nanotechnology to fabricate structures with dimensions below 10 nanometers — up to 100 times thinner than spider silk. “I won’t say we can do better, but we can make smaller structures than the insects do using nanotechnology,” says Zhou, in a release.
For the ear probe, the team plans to miniaturize the flow microphone, integrate a laser for added precision, and pair it with a conventional acoustic-pressure microphone — all within the safety constraints required for an in-ear device.
Clinical Relevance for Audiologists
OAEs are sounds generated by the cochlea — the spiral-shaped cavity housing the sensory hair cells responsible for transducing sound waves — in response to auditory stimuli. Studies have established that OAEs diminish or disappear following inner ear damage, making them a valuable, non-invasive marker of cochlear health. Audiologists routinely use OAE testing as part of newborn hearing screening programs and in broader diagnostic evaluations.
The team’s prototype development phase is expected to span the first three years of the project, after which the researchers plan to refine the probe’s performance through participant testing.
“If we are successful with this project, we will introduce a new instrument that can help us better understand how the ear works, and detect hearing loss earlier and more precisely,” says Zhou, in a release.
The bio-inspired flow microphone technology underlying the probe has already been commercialized through the Canadian venture firm TandemLaunch and its spin-off company Soundskrit. Binghamton University is classified as an R1 research institution by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and recorded $87.3 million in research expenditures in 2024-25.
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