Farshkaran Ali, Fry Andrew, Raterink Alex, Santorelli Adam, Porter Emily
Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringThe University of Texas at Austin Austin TX 78712 USA.
Rice University Houston TX 77005 USA.
IEEE Open J Eng Med Biol. 2023 Aug 16;5:140-147. doi: 10.1109/OJEMB.2023.3305838. eCollection 2024.
Urinary incontinence (UI) affects a significant proportion of the population and is associated with negative physical and psychological side-effects. Microwave-based technologies may have the potential to monitor bladder volume, providing a proactive, low-cost and non-invasive tool to support individuals with UI. Studies to date on microwave bladder monitoring have been limited to highly simplified computational and experimental scenarios. In this work, we study the most realistic models to date (both male and female), which incorporate dielectrically and anatomically representative tissues of the pelvic region. We examine the ability of detecting bladder fullness through both reflection and transmission-based parameters and, for the first time, study the effect of urine permittivity. As a proof-of-concept of bladder state detection, we further investigate reconstructing differential radar images of the bladder with two different volumes of urine. The results indicate that there is strong potential for monitoring and detecting the bladder state using microwave measurements.
尿失禁（UI）影响着相当一部分人群，并伴有负面的生理和心理副作用。基于微波的技术可能有潜力监测膀胱容量，为尿失禁患者提供一种主动、低成本且非侵入性的支持工具。迄今为止，关于微波膀胱监测的研究仅限于高度简化的计算和实验场景。在这项工作中，我们研究了迄今为止最真实的模型（包括男性和女性），这些模型纳入了盆腔区域具有介电和解剖代表性的组织。我们通过基于反射和传输的参数来检验检测膀胱充盈的能力，并首次研究尿液介电常数的影响。作为膀胱状态检测的概念验证，我们进一步研究用两种不同尿量重建膀胱的差分雷达图像。结果表明，利用微波测量监测和检测膀胱状态具有很大潜力。
