• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.8
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• pp.1638-1643
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• 2009

Uroflowmetry is a convenient clinical test to screen the benign prostatic hyperplasia(BPH) common in the aged men. A load cell is located beneath the urine container to measure the weight of urine. However, it is sensitive to the impact applied on the bottom of the container by the urine stream, which could be a noise source lowering the reliability of the system. With this aim, our study proposed a noise reduction technique by computing ensemble average of the weighted signals that were acquired from three-load cells forming a regular triangle beneath the urine container. Simulated urination experiment was performed with three different collection methods, all of which demonstrated significant noise reduction by ensemble averaging. Furthermore, the best results can be obtained without any special urine collection devices. Thus, our novel method can be usefully applied to uroflowmetry for enhancing measurement in terms of accuracy and reliability.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.413-418
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• 2007

Uroflowmetry is of great convenience to diagnose benign prostate hypertrophy common in aged men. The urinary flow rate is obtained by weight measurement using load cell, however, sensitive to impact noise. An alternative technique was recently proposed to measure hydraulic pressure instead of weight and demonstrated to introduce significantly reduced noise. In this paper, we described the measured diagnostic parameters between the weight and pressure measuring techniques in 10 normal men. The weight and pressure signals were simultaneously acquired during urination, converted into urine volumes, then differentiated to obtain flow rate signals, which showed very similar waveforms. Diagnostic parameters evaluated by pressure measuring technique were well correlated with the standard weight measuring technique (correlation coefficient > 0.99). Therefore, the new uroflowmetry based on hydraulic pressure measurement can provide accurate diagnostic parameters, which would be clinically valid.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.101-113
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• 2006

Objectives : This study was designed to evaluate the effect of electroacupuncture at ciliao(BL32) on voiding pattern and uroflowmetry of patients with functional voiding disease. Methods Subjects were voluntarily recruited by newspaper·s and internet. All the subjects were confirmed as International Prostatism Symptom Score(IPSS), uroflowmetry, voiding diary, symptom. The acupuncture therapy was performed 3 times a week for 3 weeks by oriental medical doctor at hospital. Acupuncture points were BL32. The patient's symptoms were assessed before and after 3 weeks treatments by IPSS. Uroflowmetry for 5minutes and voiding diary for 48 hours was measured before and after 3 weeks treatments. Results : The results were as follows; 1. After 3 weeks compared to the pre-treatment, IPSS(QOL) scores were significantly unproved. 2. After 3 weeks compared to the pre-treatment, mean voiding volume, min voiding volume and mean voiding time on voiding daiary was significantly improved. 3. After 3 weeks compared to the pre-treatment, max flow velocity and mean flow velocity on uroflowmetry in spite of increase of voiding volume show a statistically significant difference. 4. Acupunctue had hardly some side effect compared to operation and medicines and was economical. Conclusion : This study suggests that acupuncture treatments can be applicable to improve symptoms in the patients with functional voiding disease. Further study on the acupuncture and other acupoints in the patients with functional voiding disease is recommended.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.1052-1065
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• 2020

Objectives: To evaluate the reliability of a pattern identification tool for benign prostatic hyperplasia and to examine the relationship between pattern identification tool readings and IPSS and uroflowmetry. Methods: We analyzed 56 patients diagnosed with benign prostatic hyperplasia from December 27th, 2017 to December 26th, 2018 by two different Korean medical doctors and followed with a pattern identification tool and by IPSS and uroflowmetry. One week later, the patients were retested to analyze the reliability of the pattern identification tool, determined with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) using the test-retest method. The correlation between IPSS and uroflowmetry was analyzed with the Pearson coefficient. Result: The reliability of the pattern identification tool for benign prostatic hyperplasia was evaluated as "poor agreement beyond chance" (ICC=0.349). The reliability of each pattern identification score was evaluated as "good" for Yang Deficiency of Kidney, Yin Deficiency of Kidney, Deficiency of Middle Qi, and Dampness-heat of Lower Energizer. The internal consistency was evaluated as "good" for Yang Deficiency of Kidney, Yin Deficiency of Kidney, and Dampness-heat of Lower Energizer, and as "excellent" for Deficiency of Middle Qi. The correlation between pattern identification and IPSS was evaluated as a "moderate positive correlation" for all pattern identifications. The average flow rate and maximum flow rate using uroflowmetry was evaluated with "moderate negative correlation" for Yang Deficiency of Kidney and Dampness-heat of Lower Energizer. Conclusion: The reliability of a pattern identification tool for benign prostatic hyperplasia was evaluated as "poor agreement beyond chance." Further research is needed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.659-665
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• 2008

Uroflowmetry is a non-invasive and easily performed method to diagnose the benign prostate hypertrophy(BPH) which is frequently found in the aged men. There are some manufactures to provide a diagnosis tool for the benign prostate hypertrophy. Conventional products, however, render only the result of parameters related with prostate hypertrophy, not additional information such as the uroflowmetry variation and related personal information. In this paper, we developed an effective system for feature extraction of prostate hypertrophy as well as online program for wireless networked database management which can be used under ubiquitous environments and Labview based Window program.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.179-186
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• 2007

Uroflowmetry is non-invasive and easily performed to diagnose benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH) frequent in aged men. Weight change during urination is usually measured to estimate the urinary flow rate by a load cell, but sensitive to any impacts against the bottom of the container, leading to unnecessary noise generation. Moreover, load cells are relatively expensive raising the production cost. The present study proposed a new technique, measuring hydraulic pressure on the bottom of the urine container to evaluate the urinary flow rate. Low cost pressure transducer enabled almost perfectly linear relationship between the urine volume and the hydraulic pressure. During both the simulated and human urination experiment, variance of the pressure signal was more than 50 % smaller than the weight signal acquired by a load cell, which demonstrated that the impact noise was decreased to a great degree by pressure compared to weight measurement.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.436-445
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• 2004

In this study, a uroflowmetry system was developed to detect a voiding symptom conveniently at home or hospital. A implemented hardware was composed of mechanism and system circuit part, the software was developed to process uroflow data, graph display, extraction of parameter, and evaluation of congregate rate so as to analysis obtaining uroflow data. The following experiment was performed to evaluate an ability of classification and fitness. The curve pattern of uroflow was classified into each symptom. Various parameters were calculated in the curve pattern of each uroflow as follows. The parameters are MFR, AFR, VOL, VT, and FT. A significant difference among parameters was examined by a statistical analysis for extracted parameters between normal and abnormal experimental group. The uroflow data with the various symptom was divided into normal and abnormal group using fuzzy classifier. The result of the fuzzy classification using MFR and AFR was superior by 91.23 % than grouping evaluation including VOL.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.12
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• pp.2344-2348
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• 2010

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) significantly deteriorates the quality of life in aged men. Uroflowmetry is a convenient non-invasive clinical test to diagnose BPH. However, the test is usually performed in the presence of a technician, which may affect the way of urination for the lack of privacy. The present study developed a wireless uroflowmeter to provide the best privacy with a user program on PC evaluating the diagnostic parameters. Pilot experiment was followed to test clinical applicability.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Simulation Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.112-115
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• 2005

In this paper, had known weighing machine from the urine weight measuring, nonflexible net type resistant installed on uroflowmetry measures of occured uroflow from the origin voided flow vector force and detrusor action related to gain newly form's uroflowmetry embodied and than, whether clinical application took usefulness assessment.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.198-204
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• 2008

Uroflowmetry is a non-invasive clinical test useful for screening benign prostatic hyperplasia(BPH) common in the aged men. The current standard way to obtain the urinary flow rate is to continuously acquire the urine weight signal proportional to volume over time. The present study proposed an alternative technique measuring pressure to overcome noise problems present in the standard weight measuring technique. Experiments were performed to simultaneously acquire both weight and pressure changes during urination of 9 normal men. Noise components were separated from volume signals converted from both weight and pressure signals based on the polynomial signal model. Signal-to-noise ratio was defined as the ratio of the energies between signal and noise components of the measured volume changes, which was 8.5 times larger in the pressure measuring technique, implying that cleaner signal could be obtained, more immune to noisy environments. When four important diagnostic parameters were estimated, excellent correlation coefficients higher than 0.99 were resulted with mean relative errors less than 5%. Therefore, the present pressure measurement seemed valid as an alternative technique for uroflowmetry.