“Swallow This Camera”

Like a tribute to the 1966 sci-fi film “Fantastic Voyage,” patients suffering from small intestine problems can now take a pill equipped with a tiny camera that will remain in the digestive tract for several hours, recording up to 50,000 images at two pictures per second. As The Telegraph reports, the new technology is known as M2A Capsule Endoscopy. The M2A pill is approximately an inch long and a half-inch in diameter and contains its own lens, battery, lights, transmitter and antenna. The images it records are transmitted to a receiver on a belt and downloaded into a computer for viewing by the physician. This new technique can be used to spot ulcers, tumors, leaky vessels and inflammatory conditions such as Crohns disease. The small intestine is a problem area for conventional diagnostic techniques–the 22 feet between the stomach and colon has been a black box, until now.