A swallowing device used to record gastric electrophysiological activity

The latest technological achievements have enabled the development of new, cutting-edge medical devices, including surgical robots, sensors that can monitor physiological processes, and VR platforms for training doctors. A long-term goal of medical technology engineers is also to create devices that can be swallowed or otherwise placed in the human body to observe or track the activity of specific organs.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Medical School recently developed a new swallowing device that can be used to record electrophysiological signals in users’ gastrointestinal tracts. This device, presented in an article published in Nature electronicscould help doctors safely diagnose and monitor the progression of disorders that affect the digestion of food and fluids.

“The ability to record high-quality electrophysiological data from the gastrointestinal tract and enteric nervous system is useful in understanding various disorders and improving health care through early diagnosis,” Siheng Sean You, Adam Gierlach and their colleagues wrote in their paper.

“However, such measurements remain challenging because the electrodes must be surgically implanted or worn on the skin, resulting in a trade-off between signal quality and invasiveness. We report that a swallowing device is used for gastric electrophysiology.”

The enteric nervous system (ENS), one of three key divisions of the autonomic nervous system, consists of millions of neurons and cells that regulate the secretion of hormones in the gastrointestinal tract. Many gastrointestinal disorders, including gastroparesis and functional dyspepsia, are associated with dysfunctional electrical signaling of these neurons.

Reliably tracking the electrical signaling of cells in the gastrointestinal tract could therefore help doctors diagnose various disorders, better understand their basis, and develop personalized treatment strategies. The swallowing device developed by you, Gierlach and their colleagues can record these electrical signals and send them to a receiver outside the patient’s body.

The device developed by the team consists of an electronic module and various flexible measurement electrodes placed in a 3D-printed package that looks like a capsule or pill. The entire housing, including the electrodes, is made of biocompatible materials that can be safely introduced into the human body.

“The non-invasive system, called multimodal electrophysiology by swallowing, gastric, untethered tracking (MiGUT), consists of encapsulated electronic components and a ribbon of sensing electrode that unfolds in the postpartum stomach to make contact with the mucosa” – Ty, Gierlach and their colleagues wrote.

“The vc device then records and wirelessly transmits the biopotential signals to an external receiver. We demonstrate that the device can record electrical signals – including gastric slow wave, respiratory signal and heart signal – in a large animal model and can monitor slow wave activity in freely moving and feeding animals.”

You, Gierlach and their colleagues have so far evaluated their device by inserting it into anesthetized pigs and then collecting measurements when the pig wakes up and starts moving again.

Their findings were very promising, suggesting that the device can be safely inserted inside a living animal and can record high-quality electrical signals from its gastric environment.

The device could soon be further evaluated in additional animal tests and ultimately in human clinical trials. In the future, its development could open up new opportunities for medical research and practice, while potentially influencing the development of other ingestible medical devices.

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