Congratulations to the Noninvasive Bladder Volume Monitor Senior Design team for winning the User Impact Award 2021

Team Members: Damen Wilson, Chris Kannmacher, Ben McAteer, Anand Shroff, Stevie Burgett

“We were a team designated to create a Wearable Bladder Volume Monitoring Device. The goal was to reduce the occurrence of bladder-triggered Autonomic Dysreflexia (AD). This life threatening disorder occurs when spinal cord injured individuals receive persistent stimuli from below their spinal injury. The signals do not make it through the severed nerves and dissipate into surrounding sympathetic nerves. This causes an overwhelming sensation of the sympathetic nervous system- triggering a fight or flight response. They undergo a debilitating headache, become sweaty and dizzy, but the main concern is a spike in blood pressure putting the individual at a 400% increased chance of heart attack or stroke each time AD occurs. It is triggered by the feeling of a full bladder 85% of the time.

The solution for this problem: a noninvasive bladder volume monitor that alerts the user when they would normally begin to feel the need to pee. The solution we designed is wearable and can be used in conjunction with a catheter to warn of kinks or full urine collection bags. The device used impedance to detect bladder fullness. Because urine is more conductive than fat or muscle, as the bladder fills, the impedance of the lower abdomen drops. By the end of the semester our team was able to detect bladder-related impedance changes in the lower abdomen of real humans

We were awarded with the “User Impact” design award by Purdue BME. This award is for the design that can positively impact the users. Once again I need to thank my team as well as our mentor Dr. Charles Babbs, Dr. Hugh Lee for his design guidance, Kirk Foster and Dr. Steven Ash for their bio impedance knowledge, and Asem Aboelzahab for his always-dependable communication and technical help.”