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Pill-sized camera can be swallowed
2008-02-07
Technology that doctors expect will help detect precancerous cells faster and less painfully also could someday take cameras to parts of the body where no camera has gone before. Cameras the size of pills could "put eyes on tools" for laparoscopic surgery, snake inside a bile duct or fallopian tube, or weave their way deeper inside a person's lungs than any non-surgical device has been able to go. Unlike a standard endoscope, which is almost a centimeter wide and can only be inserted into the esophagus after a patient is sedated, a new device invented at the University of Washington consists of seven fiber optic cables encased in a capsule about the size of a typical pain killer. The device is aimed at detecting early signs of esophageal cancer, which is the fastest growing cancer in the United States. In addition to its size, the main advantage of this invention is its cost -- a few hundred dollars compared to more than $5,000 for the standard scope. The technology's primary developer, Eric Seibel, a research associate professor of mechanical engineering, is the only human who has tried the device so far. He says sliding the tiny camera down your throat is like swallowing a pill attached to a string. "Never in your life have you ever swallowed anything and it's still sticking out of your mouth, but once you do it, it's easy," he said. The camera's 1.4-mm-thick tether allows the doctor to move the camera around and pull it back up once the five- or 10-minute test is finished. Human testing of the device is set to begin in about a month at the Seattle Veterans Administration hospital. A larger, more expensive, but untethered pill camera was developed by an Israeli company in 2000 to test for intestinal cancer. Seibel said the disadvantages of the wireless camera are that doctors have no control over its path and it cannot be reused because it completes its voyage through the digestive system.
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