The first wireless camera pills created a revolutionary new perspective for engineers and physicians, demonstrating for the first time the feasibility of achieving medical objectives deep within the human body from a swallowable, wireless platform. The approximately 10 years since the first camera pill has been a period of great innovation in swallowable medical devices. Many modules and integrated systems have been devised to enable and enhance the diagnostic and even robotic capabilities of capsules working within the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This article begins by reviewing the motivation and challenges of creating devices to work in the narrow, winding, and often inhospitable GI environment. Then the basic modules of modern swallowable wireless capsular devices are described, and the state of the art in each is discussed. This article is concluded with a perspective on the future potential of swallowable medical devices to enable advanced diagnostics beyond the capability of human visual perception, and even to directly deliver surgical tools and therapy non-invasively to interventional sites deep within the GI tract.
An innovative approach to active locomotion for capsular endoscopy in the gastric district is reported in this paper. Taking advantage of the ingestion of 500 ml of transparent liquid by the patient, an effective distension of the stomach is safely achieved for a timeframe of approximately 30 minutes. Given such a scenario, an active swallowable capsule able to navigate inside the stomach thanks to a four propeller system has been developed. The capsule is 15 mm in diameter and 30 mm in length, and it is composed of a supporting shell containing a wireless microcontroller, a battery and four motors. The motors enable the rotation of propellers located in the rear side of the device, thus obtaining a reliable locomotion and steering of the capsule in all directions in a liquid. The power consumption has been properly optimized in order to achieve an operative lifetime consistent with the time of the diagnostic inspection of the gastric district, assumed to be no more than 30 minutes. The capsule can be easily remotely controlled by the endoscopist using a joystick together with a purposely developed graphical user interface. The capsule design, prototyping, in vitro, ex vivo and preliminary in vivo tests are described in this work.
The design and development of a functional integrated system for gastroscopy is reported in this paper. The device takes advantage of four propellers enabling locomotion in a liquid environment and generating a maximum propulsive force of 25.5 mN. The capsule has been equipped with a miniaturized wireless vision system that acquires images with a frame rate of 30 fps (frames per second). The overall size of the capsule is 32 mm in length and 22 mm in diameter, with the possibility of decreasing the diameter to swallowable dimensions. The capsule is remotely controlled by the user who can intuitively drive the device by looking at the video streaming on the graphical interface. The average speed of the device is 1.5 cm/s that allows for a fine control of the capsule motion as demonstrated in experimental tasks consisting of passing through circular targets. The video system performances have been characterized by evaluating the contrast, the focus, and the capability of acquiring and perceiving different colors. The usability of the device has been tested on bench and on explanted tissues by three users in real time target-identification tasks, in order to assess the success of the integration process. The lifetime of the capsule with active motors and vision system is 13 min, that is, a timeframe consistent with traditional gastroscopic examinations.
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