Currently, wireless power transmission technology is being developed for capsule endoscopes. By removing the battery, the capsule endoscope is miniaturized, the number of images that can be taken increases, and the risk of harmful substances leaking from the battery when it is damaged inside the body is avoided. Furthermore, diagnostic accuracy is improved by adjusting the directivity of radio waves according to the position of the capsule endoscope to improve efficiency and adjusting the number of images to be taken according to position by real-time position estimation. In this study, we report the result of position estimation in a high-definition numerical human body model and in an experiment on an electromagnetic phantom.

In recent years, capsule endoscopy has attracted attention as one of the medical devices that examine internal digestive tracts without burdening patients. Wireless power transmission of the capsule endoscope has been researched now, and the power transmission efficiency can be improved by knowing the capsule location. In this paper, we develop a localization method wireless power transmission. Therefore, a simple algorithm for using received signal strength (RSS) has been developed so that position estimation can be performed in real time, and the performance is evaluated by performing three-dimensional localization with eight receiving antennas.

To design antennas for ingestible capsule endoscope systems, the transmission factors of dipole and loop antennas placed in the torso-shaped phantom filled with deionized water or human body equivalent liquid (HBEL) are investigated by numerical and experimental study. The S-parameter method is used to evaluate transmission characteristics through a torso-shaped phantom in a broadband frequency range. Good agreement of S-parameters between measured results and numerical analysis is observed and the transmission factors for both cases are obtained. Comparison of the transmission factors between HBEL and deionized water is presented to explain the relation between conductivity and the transmission characteristics. Two types of antennas, dipole antenna and loop antenna are compared. In the case of a dipole antenna placed in deionized water, it is observed that the transmission factor decreases as conductivity increases. On the other hand, there is a local maximum in the transmission factor at 675 MHz in the case of HBEL. This phenomenon is not observed in the case of a loop antenna. The transmission factor of capsule dipole antenna and capsule loop antenna are compared and the guideline in designing capsule antennas by using transmission factor is also proposed.

To improve the performance of capsule endoscope, it is important to add location information to the image data obtained by the capsule endoscope. There is a disadvantage that a lot of existing localization techniques require to measure channel model parameters in advance. To avoid such a troublesome pre-measurement, this paper pays attention to capsule endoscope localization based on an electromagnetic imaging technology which can estimate not only the location but also the internal structure of a human body. However, the electromagnetic imaging with high resolution has huge computational complexity, which should prevent us from carrying out real-time localization. To ensure the accurate real-time localization system without pre-measured model parameters, we apply genetic algorithm (GA) into the electromagnetic imaging-based localization method. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed GA-based method in terms of the simulation time and the location estimation accuracy compared to the conventional methods. In addition, we show that the proposed GA-based method can perform more accurately than the other conventional methods, and also, much less computational complexity of the proposed method can be accomplished than a greedy algorithm-based method.

In the case of miniaturized telemetry capsules, such as a capsule endoscope that can acquire and transmit images from the intestines, the size and the power consumption of the module are restricted. In the capsule endoscopes, it is desirable that the control function can capacitate the sampling of digestive fluid and tissue, drug delivery, and locomotion. In this paper, the control function was embodied by bi-directional communication. A CPLD (complex programmable logic device) controller was designed and implemented for the bi-directional communication in capsule endoscope. The diameter of capsule was 12 mm and the length was 30 mm. The performance of implemented capsule was verified by in-vivo animal experiments.

Diseases of the gastro-intestinal tract are becoming more prevalent. New techniques and devices, such as the wireless capsule endoscope and the telemetry capsule, that are able to measure the various signals of the digestive organs (temperature, pH, and pressure), have been developed for the observation of the digestive organs. In these capsule devices, there are no methods of moving and grasping them. In order to make a swift diagnosis and to give proper medication, it is necessary to control the moving speed of the capsule. This paper presents a wireless system for the control of movements of an electrical stimulus capsule. This includes an electrical stimulus capsule which can be swallowed and an external transmitting control system. A receiver, a receiving antenna (small multi-loop), a transmitter, and a transmitting antenna (monopole) were designed and fabricated taking into consideration the MPE, power consumption, system size, signal-to-noise ratio and the modulation method. The wireless system, which was designed and implemented for the control of movements of the electrical stimulus capsule, was verified by in-vitro experiments which were performed on the small intestines of a pig. As a result, we found that when the small intestines are contracted by electrical stimuli, the capsule can move to the opposite direction, which means that the capsule can go up or down in the small intestines.