Work

Smart Diaper Sensor-Based Voiding-Pattern Classification Using Label-Efficient Contrastive Time-Series Learning

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Smart-diaper signals collected during routine care are affected by sensor noise, transmission gaps, variable event durations, and limited labels, making normal voiding (NV) and urinary incontinence (UI) difficult to distinguish using threshold-based detection alone. We developed a label-efficient time-series classification framework based on Context-Aware Temporal Contrastive Coding (CA-TCC) using the resistance (RVAL) channel of a smart-diaper sensor. Recordings from 97 older residents across three long-term care facilities were quality-filtered, aggregated at 3 min intervals, screened for candidate events, and interpolated to fixed-length inputs. CA-TCC was pre-trained on an unlabeled candidate-event pool and adapted using 4877 manually labeled events. The linear-probe, full fine-tuning, and class-aware pseudo-label retraining configurations were evaluated using participant-grouped five-fold cross-validation. The selected semi-supervised configuration achieved 82.12±2.33% accuracy, 82.12±2.32% macro-F1, and an AUC of 0.895±0.018 (mean ± 95% confidence interval), exceeding the strongest classical baseline by 4.80 macro-F1 percentage points. Its macro-F1 increased from 79.22±1.84% with 1000 labeled events to 81.97±1.82% with the full labeled set, whereas full fine-tuning showed greater fold-to-fold variability. Aggregated LIME analysis over 300 held-out events did not support localization of the model’s evidence to the event onset. These results indicate that contrastive pre-training can support smart-diaper voiding-pattern classification when labeled data are limited.

Source: Electronics

DOI: 10.3390/electronics15163657