A Super-Capacitive Pressure Sensor for a Urethral Catheter

Urinary incontinence can be due to neuromuscular or structural problems in either the bladder or the urethra. Urodynamics is often used to analyze the patientspecific 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.