Sunday, May 4, 2025
5/4/2025
Capsule endoscopy with 720-degree imaging capability and immersive display - Project Summary: Aging increases the risk of GI disorders such as CRC, inflammatory bowel disease, and appendicitis. NIH statistic shows that an estimated 60 to 70 million Americans are affected by gastrointestinal diseases annually and nearly 40% of older adults have one or more age-related digestive symptom each year. Unfortunately, the increasing global geriatric population base is expected to further worsen this situation over the coming years. Traditional endoscopy is limited for the discovery of the GI tract diseases. As a new diagnosis tool, video capsule endoscopy has provided the cheapest and best noninvasive and non-ionization solution so far to the problems of GI tract imaging. The advantage of capsule endoscopy (CE) is that it works in a very simple way as CE is performed via a swallowed capsule containing a tiny video camera. However, CE has some major drawbacks including limited field of view, prone to miss detection of diseases, and long diagnose viewing time. In this SBIR effort, we propose to develop an unprecedented CE imaging technology. When completed, our CE will provide a completely 720-degree field of viewing capability with zero blind spot. Through immersive virtual reality display technology, clinicians will be able to “walk through” the real GI tract and conduct a full scale disease screening on the GI tract surroundings at any location. We envision the following major clinic impact and significant for our project: 1) Greatly improving the diagnosis accuracy. With a full spherical view on the GI tract tissue wall, there will be no GI disorder area missed. 2) Significantly increasing the diagnosis efficiency. With the immersive display technologies, clinicians will be able to quickly locate the troubled area with no abundant video data. 3) Better mass acceptance and effective disease prevention through the low-cost and pain-free CE procedures. The global capsule endoscopy market was valued at USD 454.7 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.7% to reach USD 886.3 million by 2022. According to the W.H.O, global population base pertaining to the age group – 65 years and above is expected to rise from 7% in 2000 to 16% in 2050. This is expected to significantly improve the patient base, thereby, driving the growth of the capsule endoscopy market.
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