“This technology addresses a significant shortcoming of capsule endoscopy,’’ said Adam Wax, a Duke University professor who has been developing advanced fiber endoscopes.
Wax said he imagines a lot more people would be willing to undergo colonoscopies if they could simply swallow a capsule, rather than have the current scoping procedure, which involves unpleasant preparation as well as risk of bowel damage. Today’s capsule endoscopes - tiny cameras encased in plastic - can’t be used for cancer screening, he said, because they take pictures at random intervals and so only catch cancers by chance or if the tumor is extremely large.
The images can be seen only later, once the capsule has sent them wirelessly to a data recorder worn on the patient’s belt, so a second procedure is often needed to confirm a diagnosis. Capsule endoscopes are naturally excreted and painless.
Hata wants his capsule to deliver images in real time, allowing doctors to identify and explore areas of concern with one procedure. He would also like the capsule to be able to ferry drugs to the tumor or injury site, or deliver laser pulses, zapping a tumor from within the bowel - though he admits this idea is farfetched, based on existing technology.
For now, he and the team are working to improve the steering and powering of their capsule. In a paper published in October in the journal Biomedical Microdevices, they showed they could “swim’’ their capsule through a tank of water, powered by a conventional MRI machine.
The magnetic field of the MRI rotates several tiny wire coils in the capsule. The current that runs through them sequentially creates a tail motion, like a swimming sperm, allowing the capsule to propel itself through liquid.
