HomeScience and ResearchScientific ResearchNew “Smart Pill” Could Accurately Reveal Where Slowdowns In Digestion May Occur

New “Smart Pill” Could Accurately Reveal Where Slowdowns In Digestion May Occur

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It is estimated that gastrointestinal problems impact more than one-third of the world’s population, making it critical to create more accurate and effective diagnoses and treatment procedures.

Several disorders, including gastroesophageal reflux disease and gastroparesis, may be caused by aberrant gut motility, in which ingested food travels excessively fast or slowly, making it extremely important to assess the food’s speed in the stomach.

Existing technology often requires repeated examination in a hospital environment and uses invasive procedures like endoscopies or possibly harmful X-ray radiation.

Engineers at MIT and Caltech have made an ingestible sensor that can be tracked as it moves through the digestive tract. This could make it easier for doctors to diagnose conditions like constipation, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and gastroparesis, which affect how the digestive tract moves.

The small sensor is able to do its job thanks to an external electromagnetic coil that generates a magnetic field. Since the field’s strength changes with distance from the coil, the sensor’s position can be figured out by measuring the magnetic field.

In the latest study, the researchers demonstrated how this technology might be used to follow the sensor as it passed through the huge animals’ digestive tracts. A device like this could be useful as a replacement for invasive diagnostic methods for motility problems, such as endoscopy.

About 35 million Americans suffer from GI motility issues, which may affect any region of the digestive system and prevent food from passing through it. They are often identified by nuclear imaging tests or X-rays, or by inserting catheters with pressure transducers that detect GI tract contractions.

Researchers from MIT and Caltech wanted to find an alternative that would be less painful and could be done at the patient’s home.

Their plan was to create a capsule that, if ingested, would transmit a signal outlining its location in the GI tract. This would let medical professionals identify the area of the tract that was slowing down the patient’s digestion and better plan their course of action for treating their disease.

In order to do so, the researchers made use of the fact that, as one moves away from an electromagnetic coil, the field it produces weakens in a predictable manner. The magnetic sensor they created, which is tiny enough to put in an ingestible capsule, gauges the magnetic field around it and utilizes that data to determine how far it is from an external coil.

“Because the magnetic field gradient uniquely encodes the spatial positions, these small devices can be designed in a way that they can sense the magnetic field at their respective locations,” says lead author Saransh Sharma, adding, “after the device measures the field, we can back-calculate what the location of the device is.”

To correctly determine a device’s position within the body, the system also incorporates a second sensor that stays outside the body and serves as a reference point. This sensor, which could be taped to the skin, would allow researchers to determine with high precision where in the digestive process the ingestible sensor is.

In addition, the ingestible sensor has a wireless transmitter built into it, which relays the measurement of the magnetic field to a nearby computer or smartphone. Measurements may be taken automatically whenever the system detects a wireless trigger from a smartphone, or it can be set to automatically take measurements at predetermined intervals.

“Our system can support localization of multiple devices at the same time without compromising the accuracy. It also has a large field of view, which is crucial for human and large animal studies,” adds senior author Azita Emami.

The current sensor version has a detection range of up to 60cm, allowing it to pick up magnetic fields from electromagnetic coils. The researchers anticipate that the coils might be put in the patient’s backpack or jacket, or even in the back of a toilet, and that the ingestible sensor would be able to gather readings anytime it was within range of the coils.

The researchers tested their new system on a large animal model. They put an ingestible capsule in the stomach and tracked its location as it moved through the digestive tract over several days.

The first experiment included sending out two magnetic sensors that were connected by a short rod so that the researchers could precisely measure the distance between them. The researchers then compared the results of their magnetic field measurements to this established standard, and discovered that their readings were accurate to within 2 mm, which is far better than the resolution of any previously produced magnetic-field-based sensors.

The next step in the process included the researchers conducting experiments using a single ingestible sensor as well as an external sensor that was applied to the skin.

Researchers demonstrated that they could follow an eaten sensor from the stomach through the colon and finally out the feces by measuring the distance between each sensor to the coils.

When the researchers compared the precision of their method to X-ray readings, they discovered that it was precise to within 5 to 10 millimeters.

“Using an external reference sensor helps to account for the problem that every time an animal or a human is beside the coils, there is a likelihood that they will not be in exactly the same position as they were the previous time,” says lead author Khalil Ramadi, adding, “in the absence of having X-rays as your ground truth, it’s difficult to map out exactly where this pill is, unless you have a consistent reference that is always in the same location.”

According to the researchers, this kind of monitoring might make it much simpler for medical professionals to identify which part of the GI tract is causing a delay in digestion.

“The ability to characterize motility without the need for radiation, or more invasive placement of devices, I think will lower the barrier for people to be evaluated,” adds senior author Giovanni Traverso.

In order to ultimately test the system in human clinical trials, the researchers now plan to engage with colleagues to establish manufacturing procedures for the device and better evaluate its efficacy in animals.

Source: 10.1038/s41928-023-00916-0

Image Credit: MIT

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