Title: Technology of swallowable capsule for medical applications

Authors: Ioannis Intzes; Hongying Meng; John Cosmas

Addresses: Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Brunel University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK ' Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Brunel University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK ' Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Brunel University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK

Abstract: Medical technology has undergone major breakthroughs in recent years, especially in the area of the examination tools for diagnostic purposes. This paper reviews the swallowable capsule technology in the examination of the gastrointestinal system for various diseases. The wireless camera pill has created a more advanced method than many traditional examination methods for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal diseases such as gastroscopy by the use of an endoscope. After years of great innovation, commercial swallowable pills have been produced and applied in clinical practice. These smart pills can cover the examination of the gastrointestinal system and not only provide to the physicians a lot more useful data that is not available from the traditional methods, but also eliminates the use of the painful endoscopy procedure. In this paper, the key state-of-the-art technologies in the existing Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) systems are fully reported and the recent research progresses related to these technologies are reviewed. The paper ends by further discussion on the current technical bottlenecks and future research in this area.

Keywords: biomedical engineering; swallowable capsules; wireless capsule endoscopy; WCE; wireless camera pills; ASIC; FPGA; field-programmable gate arrays; gastrointestinal examination; gastrointestinal diseases; smart pills.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2014.060535

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2014 Vol.14 No.4, pp.277 - 296

Received: 06 Aug 2013
Accepted: 23 Jan 2014

Published online: 21 Oct 2014 *

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