Short: Real-Time Bladder Monitoring by Bio-impedance Analysis to Aid Urinary Incontinence

Abstract

The inability to sense the need to urinate is a persistent trouble for many individuals who have urinary incontinence. There are no products for people with urinary incontinence and their caregivers that target the elimination of involuntary urination instead of containing leaks or warning about leaks. Thus, fulfilling the real-time monitoring of the bladder to notify urination time holds a life-changing innovation potential for people with urinary incontinence. In this paper, we propose a low-cost wearable device in the form factor of an unobtrusive belt that uses bio-impedance measurement across the bladder region to notify the patients or caregivers about the need to urinate. We also present results from human subject tests using the proposed wearable prototype with a custom machine-learning algorithm to evaluate the accuracy of the system. Results from the human-subject tests showed an accuracy of over 90% on the binary task of full versus empty bladder states based on the change in bio-impedance values.