Background

Comprehensive screening of the lower GI tract is essential to detect and treat the early stages of deadly diseases, such as cancer, as well as to correctly diagnose inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Ingestible endoscopic capsules have shown promising results in the past two decades, offering a less invasive and less painful alternative to colonoscopic screening. To date capsule endoscopy is the only available option for the screening of the small bowel. Nonetheless, limited control over capsules’ motion, which relies solely on peristalsis, prevents this technology from achieving equivalent performance to conventional endoscopes, which are still regarded as the gold standard for screening of the lower GI tract.

Magnetic capsules are one of the most promising alternatives to address the limitations of capsule systems, providing them with active navigation capabilities: magnetic coupling between an endoscopic capsule embedding a permanent magnet and a larger electromagnet positioned outside the patient body is used to guide the capsule through the patient’s GI tract. Despite the clear benefits of wireless magnetic guided navigation in terms of controllability of the system’s position, this approach requires large, expensive equipment (e.g. robotic arms carrying electro-magnets) and specialist operational training for the clinicians. Other methods which rely on the coupling between wheels/tracks/legs and the wall of the GI tract to propel capsule-like systems have been also proposed, however, the significant diameter change from the beginning to the end of the targeted path poses a considerable challenge to the navigation of any system of fixed geometry.

Technology Overview

A proof-of-concept tethered SoftSCREEN system for colon screening is shown in . The main features of the system are: i) a worm gear powered by a motor encased by a rigid cylindrical body (grey), ii) two inflatable doughnut shaped chambers (in white), iii) continuously everting elastic tracks (green) iv) pneumatic and hydraulic channels for inflation and cleaning and v) camera.

The motion is provided by rotating the worm gear which engages and moves the elastic tracks around the two inflatable chambers (in white) and along the length of the capsule.

Both tethered and untethered designs of the system for screening the lower and upper GI tract and of the GI tract as a whole are currently under development.

Stage of Development

The system is currently at TRL 4/5 and a 2:1 scale prototype is being optimised prior to building a 1:1 prototype.

Benefits

SoftSCREEN differs from other track-based capsule designs because the inflatable chambers can be pressurised and inflated/deflated independently. This design feature allows the system to:

match the local lumen of the GI tract, ensuring constant traction of all the tracks.
self-align with the central axis of the targeted section, thus providing a stable and consistent position for the embedded camera for navigation and screening.

Applications

The technology has the potential to be used for all standard endoscopic procedures related to the GI tract eg. (flexible) sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy and esophagogastroduodenoscopy. It would also be suitable for use in capsule endoscopy procedures, typically used to screen the small intestine.

Opportunity

The team is seeking market feedback on the opportunity and future commercial and collaboration partners.

SoftSCREEN: Soft Shape-shifting Capsule Robot for Endoscopy based on Eversion Navigation

Patents

IP Status

Seeking