A Super-Capacitive Pressure Sensor for a Urethral Catheter

摘要

Urinary incontinence can be due to neuromuscular or structural problems in either the bladder or the urethra. Urodynamics is often used to analyze the patient-specific cause of urinary incontinence. In urodynamics, a challenging part of the studies involves measurement of the urethral (contact) pressure profile. Here we present an instrumented urethral catheter that is equipped with a novel super-capacitive pressure transducer that is highly sensitive to the applied pressure. A solid ionic electrolyte is used to create a high capacitance device. Through an innovative design the solid electrolyte is made and bounded to a 3d printed soft balloon and then assembled on a 6 Fr urethral catheter. In this paper the design, fabrication and evaluation of the highly-sensitive instrumented catheter's performance are discussed.