4-Camera VGA-Resolution Capsule Endoscope with 80Mb/s Body-Channel Communication Transceiver and Sub-cm Range Capsule Localization

Abstract

Recently, capsule endoscopes are emerging as an alternative to the cable-attached endoscopes since not only mitigating pain and fear of patients but also acquiring additional information about unexplained lesions for accurate diagnoses. Nevertheless, their applicability has been mainly limited by insufficient viewing angles and image qualities [1]. Especially, a single end-facing camera with VGA resolution images suffers from blurred and blind zone through digestive canal, increasing its overall miss-rate up to 20%, which is fatal in diagnosis [2]. A 4-camera capsule was proposed to support 360°-visual angle [1], however, full 360° images were just stored on a Flash EPROM without wireless image transmission, real-time image viewing and capsule tracking. Full 360° high resolution images with multi-cameras inherently require high data-rate wireless telemetry inside the capsule, but previous wireless capsule endoscopes [3] did not support wireless transmission of panoramic view images because of their limited bandwidth with the coin battery.