A Gastric Tube Monitoring System for Clinical Applications

To correctly insert a gastric tube into the stomach, the position of an attached permanent magnet is estimated by solving the inverse problem using measurement data obtained from magneto-impedance (MI) sensors placed outside the patient's body. The ubiquity and power of tablet computers make them promising tools to easily confirm the position of the tip of the gastric tube. However, a single mobile device may be insufficient for actually solving the inverse problem. Therefore, we propose a distributed cooperative local access network system for the estimation of the position of a permanent magnet attached to the tip of a gastric tube. In addition, we evaluate whether ferromagnetic materials near a sensor affect the performance of the system. Experimental results show that the position estimation error is less than 10 mm, even when the tip is 150 mm from a MI sensor, and that the tip position can be displayed on a tablet computer every 0.25 s. These results suggest that the proposed method holds promise for hospital applications.