Bio-Material Property Measurement System for Locomotive Mechanism in Gastro-Intestinal Tract

Recently, diseases in gastro-intestinal tract have drastically increased. As a result, endoscopic technologies are being developed to diagnose and treat these diseases. Bio-material property is essential information to develop endoscopic devices especially capsule type endoscope. Because the capsule endoscope is moved by the peristaltic motion, it has some limitations to get the image of the digestive organ. Therefore, locomotive mechanism for capsule is necessary. In order to develop the locomotive mechanism, the information of bio material property is required. Especially, the friction force between capsule endoscope and the tissues of the gastro-intestinal tract is very important information. In this paper, we propose the bio-material property measuring system which can supply the information for the design of the locomotive mechanism. By using the proposed measuring system, we evaluate the effects of design parameters such as velocity, diameter size and shape of capsule endoscope that influence the friction force to the capsule endoscope to get the dominant parameters. As a result, we can offer the useful information to design the locomotive mechanism of the capsule endoscope.