Pill camera teardown

[mikeselectricstuff]

[Psi]

That was very interesting.

Did you take apart the receiver, put it back together and return to patient who will presumably return it to the hospital for reuse
Damn, i'd be scared of being found out. I guess that's why you blocked out the S/N.

[sotos]

Excellent, teardown.

Here in Greece to do this job the patient must pay 1100 euro.

About 1441 US dollars.

[amyk]

This is a "dead" teardown (photos only) of the wireless type:
https://www.youtube.com/v/DJ4Qv8KSa3E

You can see the coil at the end, probably the antenna. Otherwise the construction looks very similar. The circuitry is probably very simple, with no microcontroller but just a couple of counters and shift registers since all it is doing is outputting raw data from the sensor.

[cybergibbons]

Really interesting... was half looking forward to you extracting images from it!

[mikeselectricstuff]

Really interesting... was half looking forward to you extracting images from it!

I did try plugging the reader USB in but it didn't enumerate as anything standard - not at all surprising given that what was inside was all custom - I was half expecting to see an embedded linux thing in there.
The software used with it does clever stuff like auto-recognising bleeds & other things for the doc to look at - it will do about 130K frames so a lot to look through manually.
http://alliancetech.com.vn/modules.php?name=Product&op=viewcat2&catid=263&newlang=english

[wkb]

Fascinating piece of kit!  'Bones'  of Startrek fame would be impressed I think 

[SeanB]

One very expensive little pill. Here you would swallow an endoscope, or sit in a CT with a lovely milkshake inside you.

[mikeselectricstuff]

AFAUI, due to cost these are only used for areas where an endoscope won't reach from either end

[westfw]

>> About 1441 US dollars.
That's significantly cheaper than my recent "traditional" procedure.  Even after insurance...
 

[grumpydoc]

AFAUI, due to cost these are only used for areas where an endoscope won't reach from either end

It's a while since I've done any gastro - broadly speaking you are correct. I suspect that UK gastroenterologists would try other imaging modalities first (such as a barium swallow) although I think that evidence is mounting that these things are cost effective in that they can give much more reliable results than messing around with several other cheaper but ultimately not as good investigations.

Of course cost would go down if the capsules were reusable but for some reason there's a patient acceptability problem with that!   

[IanB]

Presumably you have to swallow the thing and then spend 12 hours carrying the receiver device over your shoulder with the electrodes attached all over your skin? I'm sort of surprised they don't design the device with on-board storage, let it capture the images, and then recover it later. Given the current miniaturization of flash memory in microSD cards I would have thought this was feasible. Although there is of course the "failed to recover, flushed down the toilet" scenario to consider...

[Psi]

Presumably you have to swallow the thing and then spend 12 hours carrying the receiver device over your shoulder with the electrodes attached all over your skin? I'm sort of surprised they don't design the device with on-board storage, let it capture the images, and then recover it later. Given the current miniaturization of flash memory in microSD cards I would have thought this was feasible. Although there is of course the "failed to recover, flushed down the toilet" scenario to consider...

I'm pretty sure they want to avoid people having to "recover" it at all costs.

It would give their competition something to point at and say, "With our product you don't need to do that"

[mikeselectricstuff]

Presumably you have to swallow the thing and then spend 12 hours carrying the receiver device over your shoulder with the electrodes attached all over your skin?

Yes - minor inconvenience, especially as the battery is quite heavy, but somewhat low on the scale of unpleasentness in medical procedures.... 

I'm sort of surprised they don't design the device with on-board storage, let it capture the images, and then recover it later. Given the current miniaturization of flash memory in microSD cards I would have thought this was feasible. Although there is of course the "failed to recover, flushed down the toilet" scenario to consider...

Flash has a big die size - most of the area of those TSOPs in the receiver is silicon, plus  the silicon for compression and error correction.  There would also be major power consumption issues with local storage - flash is pretty power hungry.
You want as little as possible in the pill, as this there are more of them and even with a nominally recoverable system you would lose some.
A recoverable system would be viable by simply replacing the capsule casing every time.

Having one expensive receiver isn't a big deal as it's a fixed cost for a virtually infinite set of procedures.
BTW I saw a receiver kit offered second-hand for $12K so I'm guessing maybe $20K new. I bet replacement batteries aren't cheap either.

As these particular pills come apart quite easily, it would be pretty feasible to replace the batteries and reseal it - I wonder if their analysis system has any checks for duplicate IDs...  In places where people pay directly and heavily for medical procedures, I'm sure there would be some takers for a discounted second-user one...

[Mechatrommer]

Presumably you have to swallow the thing and then spend 12 hours carrying the receiver device over your shoulder with the electrodes attached all over your skin? I'm sort of surprised they don't design the device with on-board storage, let it capture the images, and then recover it later. Given the current miniaturization of flash memory in microSD cards I would have thought this was feasible. Although there is of course the "failed to recover, flushed down the toilet" scenario to consider...

its probably feasible to do inboard storage, but whats the point? if you can send it through radio? the main objective device like this is as small as possible to avoid patient discomfort and problem during journey through the "track". and since i assume the radio is only capable for short distance, then this should be "consumed" under control/supervision of the doctor, not you carry around the house and flush to the toilet. later on the doctor will time and ready to dig your shit in the "control room" (ward or hospital whatever) to recover the device. and its sensible not to put fancy stuff like compression and jpeg/mpeg into the circuit, since the main idea is... small and low power consumption. and if you really want to nitpick, why dont we complaint it only can do few frames per second?

[westfw]

Hmm.  In retrospect, the economics is really interesting.  A traditional colonoscopy (in the US) involves renting an endoscopy room, and equipment, and anesthesia, and etc.  (Did this recently.  "Pharmacy: $533.  Gastro-Intestinal Services: $5150.  Anesthesia: $508.  Medical/Surgical Supplies/devices: $108."  ("Hospital charges only.  Does not include physician or anesthesiologist."))  If you increase the "devices" cost to $1000 (camera+disposable electrodes/etc) but get rid of need for a procedure room, the "net improvement" is quite substantial!  OTOH, the Dr lacks the opportunity to select pieces of you for closeups.

(presumably, you still need the traditional "empty" digestive tract for pictures to come out, so I doubt whether a typical procedure lasts 12H.  ("Have a little more PEG, and it'll flush right out.  In more ways than one."))

[siliconmix]

reminded me of this funily enough.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/05/first_tv_image_of_mars_ever_was_made_with_crayons-2/

[amyk]

Doesn't look biodegradable... but probably it is RoHS

[mikeselectricstuff]

Hmm.  In retrospect, the economics is really interesting.  A traditional colonoscopy (in the US) involves renting an endoscopy room, and equipment, and anesthesia, and etc.  (Did this recently.  "Pharmacy: $533.  Gastro-Intestinal Services: $5150.  Anesthesia: $508.  Medical/Surgical Supplies/devices: $108."  ("Hospital charges only.  Does not include physician or anesthesiologist."))  If you increase the "devices" cost to $1000 (camera+disposable electrodes/etc) but get rid of need for a procedure room, the "net improvement" is quite substantial! 

Of course much of that is highly inflated...

OTOH, the Dr lacks the opportunity to select pieces of you for closeups.

The flip side is all the data is available for analysis whenever convenient, as opposed to during an expensive procedure. At 3fps you'd be unlucky to miss much. There is another model that takes side-looking images with a rotating camera - would love to get hold of one of those!

(presumably, you still need the traditional "empty" digestive tract for pictures to come out, so I doubt whether a typical procedure lasts 12H.  ("Have a little more PEG, and it'll flush right out.  In more ways than one."))

You fast for 12hrs before and drink plenty of water, and nothing to eat 4hrs after.

[westfw]

>> Of course much of that is highly inflated...

Of course.  The nice part about high-tech devices is that the price is more likely to go down than hospital/Dr fees.  There isn't a lot of reason for the swallowable camera to cost much more than a consumer-grade digital camera.  The current $700 price tag doesn't seem too unreasonable...


>>>    presumably, you still need the traditional "empty" digestive tract...
>> You fast for 12hrs before and drink plenty of water, and nothing to eat 4hrs after.

Interesting.  The "standard colonoscopy prep" replaces "plenty of water" with "about a gallon of laxative" (I'll assume most readers are under 50 and haven't had one.  They're no so bad, and they may save your life.)  So by the time you get to the hospital, your insides are pretty much empty.  I haven't done the upper side digestive tract.  They do take photos (I even got copies of some), and I've heard that some people have gotten DVDs.  I guess the swallowable version can do the small intestine...

[SeanB]

Swallowing the camera is a lot better than swallowing an older endoscope, with a fibre optic bundle around thumb thick, that is used for both ends ( after some cleaning) and with a lot of lidocaine flavoured lube. Of course you first meet Mr Fingers, and you pray the doc has small hands, especially when you see the gloves he puts on go up to the shoulder.

[westfw]

>> and with a lot of lidocaine flavoured lube.

Not anymore.  They've got great IV drugs now.  You won't remember anything.  And they don't let you see the endoscope.  I think they've invoked "psychology" or "marketing" or something, now that EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO DO IT.

http://eriktravelsblog.blogspot.com/2012_01_22_archive.html (college classmate)
http://www.miamiherald.com/2009/02/11/427603/dave-barry-a-journey-into-my-colon.html  (Newspaper columnist)

[Mechatrommer]

now i get it. i pick it up slow. i wonder why the hand gloving and flushing toilet at the beginning of the vidz, i thought it was just some usual joke. now Mike, show us the footage! i'm sure the pill camera is already damaged beyond repair, but... since its over radio, the footage must already in the PC, right? lets see how many sh*t you got

[Nermash]

It wasn't over radio, that was the most interesting part:)

[mikeselectricstuff]

New vid of some different pillcams :