Eliminating pulse-induced artifacts in Urethral Pressure data.

Urethral Pressure Profilometry (UPP) is a tool in the diagnosis of urinary incontinence. The pressure profile along the urethra is measured by a special catheter in order to assess the contraction strength of the sphincter muscle. The use of microtip catheters with several pressure sensors and an integrated acceleration sensor enables signal reconstruction of the pressure distribution on the urethra's inside. Experimental data from minipigs exhibit artifact patterns in the pressure data. It is shown that these artifacts are caused by vascular pulsation in the sphincter structure. We therefore investigate different methods exploiting the time-correlation of the artifacts to eliminate pulse-induced artifacts in the pressure data without compromising the actual signal. Evaluation of these methods applied to experimental data conclude this work showing that both an Input-Model and Principal Component Analysis Decorrelation are effective at removing the artifacts.