421 Tethered Capsule Endomicroscopy for Barrett's Esophagus Screening

Smart pills for gastrointestinal diagnostics and therapy

“…Other attempts at developing smart pills that image have primarily focussed on the miniaturisation and integration of modalities in clinical use, such as autofluorescent imaging [13], ultrasound [14,15] or x-ray imaging [16], some of which are shown in Figure 1. However, some capsules have also integrated imaging technologies such as optical coherence tomography (OCT) [17,18]. These activities are partially in response to current CE's limitation to mucosal imaging as technologies such as ultrasound, x-ray imaging, and OCT are capable of sub-mucosal imaging.…”

“…Attempts to integrate OCT into smart pills resulted in two tethered devices primarily demonstrated in the oesophagus [17,18]. Both pills rely on an external light source that transmits light to optics integrated within the pill via an optical fibre within the tether and mechanical scanning to generate the image.…”

“…Both pills rely on an external light source that transmits light to optics integrated within the pill via an optical fibre within the tether and mechanical scanning to generate the image. The tethered capsule developed by Gora et al was 12.8 mm in diameter and 24.8 mm long with side-viewing OCT capable of generating radial images at 20 frames per second with 30 μm lateral and 7 μm axial resolution in humans [17]. Though manual pullback of the device facilitates rapid imaging for screening purposes, it may not be sufficient to provide the stability or repeatability needed for volumetric OCT [18].…”