‘Video pill’ could help battle cancer

Scientists have developed a new type of ‘video pill’ — a swallowable camera that could detect throat and gut cancers more effectively.

Tiny sensing system cameras swallowed by patients have been used in recent years rather than endoscopes as a less intrusive way of gaining images inside the throat and gut.

The cameras rely on a small light source produced by the video pill to illuminate affected areas and produce images, but researchers from the University of Glasgow have created a pill that uses fluorescence imaging to identify rich blood supplies, which support cancers and help them to grow.

The fluorescence imaging technique is already an established diagnostic tool in medicine but it is known to be expensive and bulky, usually confining it to laboratories.

However, the university’s School of Engineering team has managed to use flurorescence imaging in a small pill form for the first time using an advanced semiconductor single-pixel imaging technique.

The pill is not yet in clinical use but developers are keen to expand systems to areas such as ultrasound.

Research associate Mohammed Al-Rawhani said: “The system we’ve developed is small and power-efficient enough to image the entire human gastrointestinal tract for up to 14 hours.

“The system could also be used to help track antibodies used to label cancer in the human body, creating a new way to detect cancer.”