Abstract
We introduce a novel diagnostic Visual Voiding Device (VVD), which has the ability to visually document urinary voiding events and calculate key voiding parameters such as instantaneous flow rate. The observation of the urinary voiding process along with the instantaneous flow rate can be used to diagnose symptoms of Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction (LUTD) and improve evaluation of LUTD treatments by providing subsequent follow-up documentations of voiding events after treatments. The VVD enables a patient to have a urinary voiding event in privacy while a urologist monitors, processes, and documents the event from a distance. The VVD consists of two orthogonal cameras which are used to visualize urine leakage from the urethral meatus, urine stream trajectory, and its break-up into droplets. A third, lower back camera monitors a funnel topped cylinder where urine accumulates that contains a floater for accurate readings regardless of the urine color. Software then processes the change in level of accumulating urine in the cylinder and the visual flow properties to calculate urological parameters. Video playback allows for reexamination of the voiding process. The proposed device was tested by integrating a mass flowmeter into the setup and simultaneously measuring the instantaneous flow rate of a predetermined voided volume in order to verify the accuracy of VVD compared to the mass flowmeter. The VVD and mass flowmeter were found to have an accuracy of +/- 2 and +/- 3% relative to full scale, respectively. A VVD clinical trial was conducted on 16 healthy male volunteers ages 23-65.