The future of wireless capsule endoscopy

We outline probable and possible developments with wireless capsule endoscopy. It seems likely that capsule endoscopy will become increasingly effective in diagnostic gastrointestinal endoscopy. This will be attractive to patients especially for cancer or varices detection because capsule endoscopy is painless and is likely to have a higher take up rate compared to conventional colonoscopy and gastroscopy. Double imager capsules with increased frame rates have been used to image the esophagus for Barrett's and esophageal varices. The image quality is not bad but needs to be improved if it is to become a realistic substitute for flexible upper and lower gastrointestinal endoscopy. An increase in the frame rate, angle of view, depth of field, image numbers, duration of the procedure and improvements in illumination seem likely. Colonic, esophageal and gastric capsules will improve in quality, eroding the supremacy of flexible endoscopy, and become embedded into screening programs. Therapeutic capsules will emerge with brushing, cytology, fluid aspiration, biopsy and drug delivery capabilities. Electrocautery may also become possible. Diagnostic capsules will integrate physiological measurements with imaging and optical biopsy, and immunologic cancer recognition. Remote control movement will improve with the use of magnets and/or electrostimulation and perhaps electromechanical methods. External wireless commands will influence capsule diagnosis and therapy and will increasingly entail the use of real-time imaging. However, it should be noted that speculations about the future of technology in any detail are almost always wrong.

A wireless endoscope based on an embedded system

We presented a wireless endoscope system developed on the embedded Linux platform. This wireless endoscope system consists of three parts: the endoscope capsule,the portable equipment and the image workstation,which make this system wireless and portable. Hardware design of this system and software design of the portable equipment are described. In clinical use,patients swallow the endoscope capsule for gastrointestinal inspection. The portable equipment receives images of gastrointestinal tract via the radio frequency module while it sets and reads back parameters of the capsule via the low frequency module. Acquired image data can be saved as a FAT32 format file in an universal serial bus disk. Images can be processed and reviewed at an Microsoft Windows PC workstation in the next stage. The image acquired by this wireless endoscope system is quite effective with clear details of gastrointestinal tract. However,the endoscope capsule was large,making it difficult to swallow. So the printed circuit board design of endoscope capsule needs to be improved.

RF characteristics of wireless capsule endoscopy in human body

The wireless capsule endoscope,as a small electronic device,has conquered some limitations of traditional wired diagnosing tools,such as the uncomfortableness of the cables for the patient and the inability to examine the very convoluted small intestine section.However,this technique is still encountering a lot of practical challenges and is looking for feasible improvements.This work investigates the RF performance of the wireless capsule endoscope system by studying the electromagnetic(EM) wave propagation within the human body.A wireless capsule endoscopy transmission channel model is constructed to serve the purpose of investigating signal attenuations according to the relative position between the transmitter and the receiver.Within 300-500 MHz,the S_(21) results are regular and do not display any sudden changes,which allows a suitable expression to be derived for S_(21) in terms of frequency and offset.The results provide useful information for capsule localization.

Efficiency analysis and optimization of wireless power transfer system for freely moving biomedical implants

In the wireless power transfer system for freely moving biomedical implants,the receiving unit was generally inefficient for the reason that its design parameters including the receiving coil's dimension and receiving circuits' topology were always determined by experiments.In order to build the relationship between these parameters and the total transfer efficiency,this paper developed a novel efficiency model based on the impedance model of the coil and the circuit model of the receiving circuits.According to the design constraints,the optimal design parameters in the worst case were derived.The results indicate that the combination of the two-layered receiving coil and half-bridge rectifier has more advantages in size,efficiency and safety,which is preferred in the receiving unit.Additionally,when the load resistance increases,the optimal turn number of the receiving coil basically keeps constant and the corresponding transmitting current and total efficiency decrease.For 100 Ω load,the transmitting current and total efficiency in the worst case were measured to be 5.30 A and 1.45% respectively,which are much better than the published results.In general,our work provides an efficient method to determine the design parameters of the wireless power transfer system for freely moving biomedical implants.