A wireless bladder volume monitoring system using a flexible capacitance-based sensor

Author

Hung Cao ; Tata, Uday ; Landge, Vaibhav ; Ai-Ling Li ; Peng, Yuan-Bo ; Chiao, J.-C.

Author_Institution

Electr. Eng. Dept., Univ. of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

20-23 Jan. 2013

Firstpage

34

Lastpage

36

Abstract

A wireless sensor system has been prototyped to monitor bladder volume in a small animal. The capacitance-based sensor was laser-micromachined from a polyimide film to form an interdigitated finger structure, followed by a sputtering process to deposit aluminum thin film. The entire sensor was encapsulated with biocompatible and elastic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). A passive telemetry platform based on inductive coupling was realized to employ the sensor in vivo and a commercial wireless module was used for data communication in air. The entire system consists of a sensor implant, an external wearable unit and a base station. The system was tested with a small rodent model demonstrating the feasibility and identifying practical issues in implementation.

Keywords

aluminium; biomedical telemetry; capacitive sensors; data communication; encapsulation; laser beam machining; micromachining; patient monitoring; polymer films; prosthetics; sputtering; wireless sensor networks; Al; PDMS; aluminum thin film; base station; biocompatible-elastic polydimethylsiloxane; commercial wireless module; data communication; encapsulation; external wearable unit; flexible capacitance-based sensor; inductive coupling; interdigitated finger structure; laser-micromachining; passive telemetry platform; polyimide film; sensor implant; sputtering process; wireless bladder volume monitoring system; wireless sensor system; Animals; Bladder; Capacitance; Fingers; Implants; Monitoring; Wireless communication; Urinary incontinence; bladder volume monitoring; capacitive-based sensor; passive wireless system;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Biomedical Wireless Technologies, Networks, and Sensing Systems (BioWireleSS), 2013 IEEE Topical Conference on

Conference_Location

Austin, TX

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2930-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/BioWireleSS.2013.6613666

Filename

6613666