A Navigation and Pressure Monitoring System Toward Autonomous Wireless Capsule Endoscopy

Continuous navigation information for medical insertion methods including wireless capsule endoscopy is an important feature to guide a medical instrument/object to the targeted location within a hollow organ or internal cavity of the patient in the best possible way. Also, an autonomous medical insertion or swallowable device with a self-contained navigation system would reduce the role of the high-level operator and hence reduce the human-factor mistake and risk of injury. The navigation techniques suggested for Wireless Capsule Endoscopy are image-based that are required to transfer and process a significant amount of data in real-time operation. This would increase the complexity of the system and would be more difficult in dark or liquid environments. A novel navigation system for Wireless Capsule Endoscopy/ordinary endoscopy that does not depend on any external source for operation and can handle the uncertainties of the path even in a dark or liquid environment (
i.e
.mucosa) of the human body is presented in this paper. The key element of the system is based on a capacitive-based pressure sensor array mounted on the capsule with the shape of semi-hemisphere. The place of each node is arranged to represent the variation in the latitude and the longitude of the travelling path. The system can acquire the required information to navigate the capsule in three-dimensional space and enhance the safety of the locomotion by monitoring the pressure between the capsule and the ambient environment. The system determines the variation of the path 180° in longitude and latitude with less than (<0.004%) percentage of error. Working algorithms for flexible and rigid environments are described in this paper.