INSTANTANEOUS ULTRASONIC MEASUREMENT OF BLADDER VOLUME

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an apparatus and method to quantify the volume of urine in a human bladder with a limited number of acoustic beams.

SOLUTION: The apparatus and method include a transducers assembly that transmits a plurality of narrow ultrasound beams in different directions towards the bladder 3 and receives the returning ultrasound signals; a receiver detector for processing the returned signals; an analog-to-digital converter; a memory to store the digitized data and a volume display allowing to define the optimal position of the transducer assembly. The apparatus also automatically determines the bladder Depth D and Height H and computes the volume of urine using an empirical formula corrected by specific, empirically measured, filling dependant correction factors.

COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT