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A team developed a new endoscopy camera which can ‘see’ through the body.
A team of specialists specially developed a camera which can be used during endoscopies, which are non-surgical procedures. This can be used to track the endoscopes as they examine the internal organs. This ability also makes it capable of ‘seeing’ through the human body.
This New Endoscopy Camera Could Have More Than One Medical Application
The new device was specially designed to aid doctors more easily track endoscopes as they are looking at the internal organs. They use a tool which is basically a flexible tube that comes equipped with a camera and a light.
This new camera version can detect the light sources still inside the body, for example, the lighted tip at the end of the flexible tube of the endoscope. Early tests have already been conducted. These suggest that the endoscopy camera is capable of tracking a point light source even through 20-cm thick tissue.
Endoscopy tools are usually hard to follow because their light beams can pass through the body, but more frequently scatter or bounce off the organs or tissues instead. This distorts their light and makes then harder to position.
The new camera offers a solution to this problem by making use of photons. It was also developed to be very sensitive, as it should be capable of detecting even tiny traces of light passing through organs or tissue.
This new tool can also reportedly record the time at which a light beam passes through the body. In turn, this should make it even easier to determine the exact position of the endoscope.
“The position was determined to centimetre accuracy, within clinically relevant settings and models,” wrote the developers in their study.
“This technique can overcome the limitations imposed by tissue scattering in optically determining the in-vivo location of fibre-optic medical instruments,” they continued.
Also, the team to develop this new endoscopic camera consider that their device could also have a variety of other medical uses. They consider that it has an ‘immense potential’, especially as they are planning on further refining its design.
A paper with the research process and results was published in the journal Biomedical Optics Express.
Image Source: Wikimedia
