Short- and long-term assessments by doctors of their patients would be facilitated by an ingestible sensor developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The sensors, placed inside a silicone capsule as small as an almond, measures the patient’s vital signs from the intestinal tract.

It’s a step up from the use of stethoscopes to listen to the body which eventually leveled up with ECGs and wearable electronic stethoscopes that monitor a person’s heart rate, reports Engadget. However, using those devices involves skin contacts that could be uncomfortable for some patients like people who suffered trauma from burns.

Other types of patients who would benefit from the sensor are soldiers deployed in war zones, patients with chronic ailments and professional and amateur athletes to improve their training, according to the MIT researchers. The study was published in the Nov 18 issue of PLOS One journal.

As an ingestible device, the sensor makes it unnecessary for the physician to have external contact with the body. It has very small microphones used in mobile phones to listen to the body and measure the heart and respiratory rates.

The sound waves picked up by the microphones from the heart and lungs as well as other noises emanating from the digestive track are sorted by a signal processing algorithm devised by the MIT team. It sorts the different sounds picked up and differentiates between heart and breathing rates. The signals are then sent to a receiver, which should be within three metres.

“What we did with our technology is identify components that were compatible with ingestion,” explains Giovanni Traverso, research affiliate at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is also the co-author of the study on the ingestible sensor.

He adds, “Through characterization of the acoustic wave, recorded from different parts of the GI tract, we found that we could measure both heart rate and respiratory rate with good accuracy.”

The sensors stay inside the intestinal tract for one or two days. Patients who need long-term analysis would need to ingest the sensors regularly. In 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration approved an ingestible sensor, although pills were only used in trials. These first attempts that measured body temperature and took images of the internal digestive tract, inspired the MIT to design a device that measures heart and respiratory rates.

Contact the writer at feedback@ibtimes.com.au or tell us what you think below

RELATED STORIES