Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

History and development of capsule endoscopy

2004; Elsevier BV; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.giec.2003.10.022

1558-1950

Gavriel J. Iddan, C. Paul Swain,

Colorectal Cancer Screening and Detection

In 1981 I went on sabbatical from Rafael Ltd. in Israel where I specialized in electro-optics and went to work for Elscint Ltd. in Boston, developing special X-ray tubes and ultrasonic probes. During my stay in Boston I befriended my neighbor, Prof. Eitan Scapa, an Israeli gastroenterologist, also on sabbatical, who was working in one of the hospitals in the Boston area. During our many meetings, we discussed our respective fields and in this way I learned first hand about fiber optic endoscopes and colonoscopes, their operation, and their limitations—especially the inaccessibility of the small intestine. Prof. Scapa challenged me into finding a way to view the small intestine but at that time I had no idea how to do it. During my next sabbatical to the US in 1991, Prof. Scapa visited me and again challenged me to find a solution to the problem of viewing the small intestine. By this time (10 years later), small format charge-coupled devices (CCD) image sensors had become available as a result of the ever-increasing desire to build small video cameras. These CCDs were used by the leading endoscope manufactures to introduce new generation of CCD-based endoscopes that projected video onto a monitor, replacing the uncomfortable and complicated fiberscope method. At that time, I thought about the possibility of cutting the camera tip of the endoscope and let it move naturally through the digestive tract, while maintaining a thin umbilical cable to the endoscope. However, knowing that the length of the small intestine can be as long as 5 m, I realized that this was not feasible. The next idea was to cut the thin umbilical cable and replace it with a transmitter. To this end, I purchased a miniature transmitter kit for future experiments.