关键词: 织物传感器, 功能电极, 智能尿片, 尿失禁, 漏尿频次监测

Abstract: Urinary incontinence (UI) refers to a condition in which urine cannot be controlled and leaks out on its own when abdominal pressure increases during exercise, sneezing, coughing, laughing, etc. According to statistics, approximately 200 million people worldwide suffer from urinary incontinence. The proportion of female patients is significantly higher than that of male patients, and the prevalence gradually increases with age. In China, the incidence of urinary incontinence in adult women is about 30.9%, that is, one in every three women suffers from this disease. Urinary incontinence is usually long-lasting, difficult to diagnose, non-fatal, and difficult to treat. Therefore, compared with normal people, the quality of life and sleep quality of patients with urinary incontinence are significantly lower, and their depression is more severe, which seriously affects their daily life.
The treatment of patients with urinary incontinence is a difficult medical problem, and currently, patients with urinary incontinence have low medical seeking rates. Most patients' lack of knowledge about urinary incontinence is an important factor affecting their intention to seek medical treatment. UI is judged based on the International Advisory Committee on Urinary Incontinence Questionnaire (ICI-Q-SF), which includes four questions, namely, to assess the frequency of urinary leakage, the amount of urine leakage, the impact of urinary incontinence, and the cause of urinary incontinence. Tables can be used to investigate the incidence of urinary incontinence and the extent to which it affects patients. Hospitals use a urine pad test to evaluate urinary incontinence. In clinical practice, a one-hour urine pad test is generally used to determine urine leakage. That is, the patient is allowed to drink pure water for 15 minutes and then perform 30 minutes of appropriate exercise such as walking and climbing stairs, and the test lasts for 15 minutes by repeating standing and sitting ≥10 times, coughing ≥10 times, running in place for one minute, bending down five times, and finally washing hands for one minute to end the test. The test detection process is cumbersome, involves long waiting time, low repeatability, and even has a certain degree of subjectivity.
With the development of science and technology, the technological innovation of smart wearable textiles has been widely used in monitoring urinary incontinence. This is an innovation in the medical field that applies advanced technology. Its core is to integrate flexible sensors and electronic components into textiles and enable it to monitor urinary frequency and other related data in patients with urinary incontinence. Smart wearable textiles include sensors embedded in textiles that can detect the flow of urine, changes in resistance, or other related parameters. Through data transmission and processing, the occurrence of urinary incontinence events can be captured and recorded, including the frequency and amount of urine leakage. Some systems can also be integrated with mobile apps or cloud services so that data can be accessed and monitored at any time by healthcare professionals or patients themselves. Because these devices incorporate technologies such as flexible sensors, wireless communication, and data processing, they are portable, miniaturized, intelligent, and capable of real-time monitoring. Compared with traditional monitoring methods, this technology is more private and does not involve embarrassing testing processes. Therefore, smart flexible wearable textiles have begun to be used to monitor the condition of urinary incontinence patients, bringing convenience and accuracy to urinary incontinence monitoring, which is expected to improve patients' quality of life and promote the development of medical care.
The frequency of urinary leakage is an important indicator for evaluating the condition of urinary incontinence patients. The higher the frequency of urinary leakage, the more serious the condition. In order to accurately diagnose the frequency of urinary leakage in each urinary incontinence patient and further address this problem, we proposed a method using intelligent flexible fabric sensors, silver-plated yarn and non-woven fabric as sensing materials for functional electrodes and designs. We designed the sensing structure and sensing pattern, and used hot melt technology to embed these functional electrodes into disposable diapers specially used for urinary incontinence patients to create functional smart diapers. At the same time, we improved and optimized the main control chip nRF5283, and wrote a data median filtering program to preprocess the urinary frequency signal. Based on the change in resistance value in the functional electrode that reflects the frequency of urine leakage, we optimally selected the conduction spacing and pattern of the sensor and conducted performance tests. Experimental results show that each electrode module of pattern C with a conduction spacing of 0.6 cm can be detected more than 15 times, with an average accuracy of 86.2% and a sensitivity of 73.5 kΩ/0.1 mL, achieving the expected goals. This smart flexible fabric sensor can be used to assess the basic health status of urinary incontinence patients and provides a simple method to prepare smart flexible fabric sensors to monitor urinary frequency.

Key words: fabric sensors, functional electrodes, smart diapers, urinary incontinence, urine leakage frequency monitoring