Computational aspects in actuation and guidance mechanism for wireless active capsule endoscope

The actuation and guidance mechanism is necessary for next-generation capsule endoscope to carry out active examinations. We studied an actuation and guidance mechanism using magnetic method for a wireless active capsule endoscope. A small permanent magnet is enclosed inside the capsule as a seed, and an external magnetic field guides the seed through the small intestine. In this paper, optimization methods are discussed to calculate the economical control currents, so as to reduce the power consumption.We divided the working space into grids and used a filament-based algorithm to compute the magnetic field at grid centers, which proved to be fast and accurate. Using the pre-stored field data and an interpolation method, it is possible to achieve real-time control of the magnetic field at arbitrary points.