On the Use of Impedance Detuning for Gastrointestinal Segment Tracking of Ingestible Capsules

During their travel through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, ingestible antennas encounter detuning in their impedance response due to varying electromagnetic (EM) properties of the surrounding tissues. This communication investigates the possibility of using this impedance detuning to detect in which segment of the GI tract—stomach, small intestine, or large intestine—the capsule is located. Meandered dipole antennas operating in the 433 MHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band are designed for this purpose. The antennas conform to the inner surface of 3-D printed polylactic acid (PLA) capsules with a shell thickness of 0.6 or 0.4 mm. The impedance response is first optimized numerically in a homogeneous cylindrical phantom with time-averaged EM properties. The magnitude and the phase of the reflection coefficient are then obtained in different tissues and compared with simulations and measurements. The experimental demonstration is carried out first using tissue-mimicking liquids and then in a recently deceased ex vivo porcine model. The minimum change in the phase between different GI tissues was determined to be around 10° in the porcine model, indicating that the changes in the impedance response, particularly the changes in the phase, provide sufficient information to follow the position of the capsule in the GI tract.