Estimation of emptying urinary bladder in paraplegic and elderly people based on bioimpedance, hypogastric region temperature and neural network

Abstract

As is known, bioimpedance is a measurement method that can be used in medicine to know the volume of a person’s urinary bladder. However, this method is not entirely reliable due to the multiple factors that influence its measurement, such as the weight of the person, body fat and even the different skin type of each person. Therefore, this paper proposes a method that combines bioimpedance, hypogastric region temperature and an artificial feed-forward neural network, sufficiently capable of determining when to empty the bladder, so that this muscle is not affected by the time exceeded of urine continence, this work is aimed to people who have suffered injuries to their spine, who do not have the ability of feeling when their bladder needs to be emptied. It is also aimed to older adults who begin to have problems with their bladder control, allowing them to improve their quality of life. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019.