LONDON - A joint team of Anglo-Israeli medical scientists have boldly gone where no one has gone before: they have recorded a video film of a journey through a person's entire digestive tract.
A pill-sized capsule containing a camera, light and radio transmitter - but no wires - has emulated science fiction by making a "fantastic voyage" from the mouth to the rear end.
In the sci-fi thriller by Isaac Asimov, made into the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage starring Raquel Welch, a submarine and its crew are shrunk and injected into a man's bloodstream.
Their mission is to destroy a blood clot in the brain of a Czech scientist who was the victim of an assassination attempt.
The real-life fantastic voyage was performed on a group of 10 volunteers who each swallowed a torpedo-shaped capsule while wearing a special belt packed with recording equipment, which monitored the capsule's passage through the body.
Video images were transmitted over many hours and collected by the recording equipment on the belt, which also monitored the capsule's precise position in the body.
The team leader, Paul Swain, a professor of gastroenterology at the Royal London Hospital, said one great advantage of the capsule was that it could be used to take images in the small bowel.
This was a region not usually accessible with conventional endoscopses inserted through the rectum.
Professor Swain said the capsule was easier to swallow than many antibiotic pills and patients could not feel it moving inside them.
- INDEPENDENT
Sci-fi body voyage now reality
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