Magnet-controlled camera

Today, doctors can capture images of the inside of a patient's intestinal tract through the use of small swallowable cameras.

Unfortunately, such cameras are unsuitable for examinations of the oesophagus and the stomach. They only take about three or four seconds to pass through the oesophagus - resulting in the production of less than twenty images. And once they reach the stomach, their roughly five-gram weight causes them to drop very quickly to the lower wall.

So for doctors to capture images of the oesophagus and the stomach, patients are still required to swallow rather thick endoscopes, which is a very uncomfortable procedure.

Now, however, all this could become a thing of the past, thanks to researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering. Working in collaboration with engineers from Given Imaging, the Israelite Hospital in Hamburg and Imperial College London, the researchers have developed a unique device to control the movement of these camera pills, allowing cameras to be steered and stopped where desired.