An ingestible sensor has been developed that can measure heart and breathing rates from within the digestive tract
Ingestible sensor can measure heart and breathing rates
Researchers explain how their technology could be used to monitor vital signs from within the GI tract.
Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT (animation and additional imagery courtesy of Diana Saville, Albert Swiston, and Giovanni Traverso)
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed the ingestible electronic device with a sensor that calculates heart and breathing rates from the sound waves produced by the beating of the heart and the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs.
This ingestible electronic device invented at MIT can measure heart rate and respiratory rate from inside the gastrointestinal tract.Image: Albert Swiston/MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Giovanni Traverso, a research affiliate at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and one of the lead authors of a paper describing the device in the PLOS One Journal, said: “Through characterisation of the acoustic wave, recorded from different parts of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, we found that we could measure both heart rate and respiratory rate with good accuracy.”
The entire sensor is about the size of a multivitamin pill and consists of a tiny microphone packaged in a silicone capsule, along with electronics that process the sound and wirelessly send radio signals to an external receiver.
In tests along the GI tract of pigs the researchers found that the device could accurately pick up heart rate and respiratory rate even when conditions such as the amount of food being digested were varied.
The researchers expect that the device would remain in the digestive tract for only a day or two, so for longer-term monitoring, patients would swallow new capsules as needed.
John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois, said: “The authors introduce some interesting and radically different approaches to wearable physiological status monitors, in which the devices are not worn on the skin or on clothing, but instead reside, in a transient fashion, inside the gastrointestinal tract.
“The resulting capabilities provide a powerful complement to those found in wearable technologies as traditionally conceived.”
The researchers said that in the future they plan to design sensors that could diagnose heart conditions such as abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias) or breathing problems including emphysema or asthma.