Swallowable Sensing Device for Long-term Gastrointestinal Tract Monitoring

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K13913
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Intelligent mechanics/Mechanical systems
• Research Institution: Kobe University
• Principal Investigator: Izumi Shintaro 神戸大学, 先端融合研究環, 助教 (60621646)
• Research Collaborator: Ohta Hidetoshi
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 飲み込み型センサ / ウェアラブル

Outline of Final Research Achievements

It is important to measure biological information related to a daily life to recognize and improve human lifestyles. We develop a biological tag that can be indwelled in the gastrointestinal tract and which can operate continuously for long durations by wireless power supply and communication. The conventional indwelling swallowable system uses a motor. It is not proposed as being of swallowable size. Therefore, we propose a mechanism using electrolysis, realizing a system without using a conventional actuator, but with a size that can be swallowed. A board of 7 mm × 20 mm was fabricated with a micro controller, an NFC-IC, an antenna connector, and a sensor. By printing on a flexible printed circuit board, the antenna can be folded and unfolded, which relaxes size restrictions. The communication distance was extended. Experiments using a human body model revealed that the device can be indwelled and egested in a swallowable size using the proposed method.

Free Research Field

生体計測