Design of an ultrasound bladder volume measurement and alarm system based on ARM and DSP

This paper presents a new wearable low-cost miniaturized ultrasound bladder volume measurement and alarm system based on ARM and DSP. The system uses a new volume computing method to estimate the bladder volume based on the ultrasound echo data obtained from a phased-array ultrasonic transducer. The main signal processing task of the ultrasound echo is performed in the DSP chip. The estimated bladder volume data is transmitted to a designed alarm system through a ZigBee radio link. Test experiments were carried out to validate the accuracy of bladder volume detection and the activation of the corresponding alarm. The system can be used for continuous monitoring of bladder volume and nursing unconsciousness elders, handicapped with spinal cord injury, other urological patients and children with nocturnal enuresis through setting alarm threshold.