Taking a look inside the human body has never been easier — just swallow a camera in the shape of a pill. However, what is not quite as easy is retrieving a piece of whatever you’re viewing. This is exactly what researchers from HIT Shenzhen have attempted to solve with their magnetic capsule bot.
When traditional procedures want to take a sample somewhere in the intestinal tract they generally require somewhat invasive procedures sticking something up…well you know. With this pill, robot magnetic control allows physicians to choose exactly where and when to take a sample, all without shoving unpleasant objects into…again you know.
A magnetic field is generated to open the capsule and suck liquids inside. This traps a sample that can be retrieved through later bowel movements. The technology hasn’t been tested on a living patient yet, but but animal trials are planned for the foreseeable future.
Check out the fine details with the paper itself here. Biomedical engineering is always an interesting topic with so much potential for more hacking. We at Hackaday are no strangers to this wonderful world of bodily hacks.
reminds me of https://endiatx.com/
yummy yummy yummy, i got robot pills in my tummy….
Having had a couple of….you know what procedures…..I’d rather have the ‘scope than the pill.
You still have to do the prep to clean you out – that’s the most unpleasant part of the whole thing.
The pill takes hours to transit, and it uploads to a device in a pouch that you have to wear all the time.
If the pill finds anything such as polyps (which is almost a certainty if you’re over 40 or 50), you’ll still need a ‘scope to remove them. That’s another cleanout some time after some poor specialist has finished watching the uploaded video of journey, days later.
Getting a ‘scope involves the cleanout, but then it’s warm bathrobes, benzodiazepam, and medical-grade alfentanyl. And in Australia, that’s all free albeit having to wait for a few months unless it’s urgent.
If this device could be developed to excise small polyps in real-time, that’d be huge improvement.
Ah, but this device could also collect a sample from the small intestine which can’t be scoped through much of its length.