Drink a Capsule to Detect Issues

This episode has to do with a capsule with a built-in camera for you to drink to take images inside your digestive tracts - no more of that gruesome endoscope examination of yesterday.

It's called capsule endoscope and many medical institutions are coming to employ this method. All you have to do is take in through your mouth a capsule with a built-in camera to take high-precision images in millimeters of issues inside the tracts. Certainly it relieves examinees of psychological and physical stresses. There seem to be problems to be tackled, but it's not doubt a great help for those colorectal cancer patients who are reluctant to take the conventional examination.

Let's see how a small intestine examination apparatus goes:

First, the examinee is given a laxative to clean inside the enteron. On the day of the examination, sensors are attached on the abdomen and a capsule, 26mm long and 11mm in diameter, is taken in with water. The capsule has a small camera built in with a battery to drive it.

The capsule travels on the peristaltic movement of the small intestine taking 2-6 pictures per second along the way. Images are sent wirelessly via the sensors to the data holder fixed on the waist and stored there.

During the process, the examinee does not have to remain in the hospital. The capsule is disposable and excreted in average 5-6 hours. The examinee will simply hand in the holder and the doctor will read the images to detect inflammation or ulceration. Tokyo University Hospital adopted the capsule endoscope in 2007 and has since used in 800 cases.

The capsule was developed by Given Imaging Ltd. (now Covidien) of Israel in mid-1990 and by Olympus of Japan in mid-2000.

The capsule endoscope inspection is covered by insurance in Japan.