Abstract Conventional pressurized tympanometry has been the clinical standard for middle-ear immittance assessment for decades, but it requires ear-canal pressure manipulation and a sealed probe fit. Wideband acoustic immittance (WAI) extended middle-ear assessment to a broadband, frequency-dependent framework, yet it still typically relies on canal sealing and dedicated systems. Pressure-Less Acoustic Immittance (PLAI™), available in a clinical implementation (Med·Wave ® ), provides an open-canal, pressure-less alternative by measuring complex acoustic admittance Y(f) as a function of frequency and deriving a compact set of resonance- and cavity-related features. In this manuscript, we present a methodological framework for interpreting PLAI outputs, including magnitude- and phase-based indices, and we report proof-of-concept in vivo measurements in a healthy volunteer to illustrate the main parameters. Additional illustrative curves are used solely to clarify how spectral shape descriptors (e.g., centroid, skewness, and kurtosis) capture changes in resonance morphology beyond Fres and peak admittance. The proposed framework is intended to support future prospective clinical validation and integration with conventional tympanometry and WAI in routine workflows.
Quaranta et al. (Thu,) studied this question.