Towards Optimized Neural Stimulation in a Device for Urinary Incontinence

A.N. Shiraz[1], A. Demosthenous[1]
[1]E&EE Department, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Published in 2013

After spinal cord injury (SCI) the functions of the lower urinary tract are often disrupted and may have fatal consequences for the patient. It has been shown that using a transrectal probe developed by Craggs et al., through conditional transrectal stimulation of pudendal nerve, it is possible to treat hyperreflexia in some of the SCI patients. To maximise the efficacy of this type of treatment, it is important to increase the chances of exciting the target nerve through maximising the second spatial derivative of electric potential along the nerve which is known as activating function. After verifying the trajectory of the nerve via MRI scans, different stimulation configurations were simulated and the activation function was measured as shown in figure.