A tiny camera will be swallowed by patients and inspect their intestines
Posted 10.12.2009 at 10:53 am
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Spider Bot Cam Spider bot, spider bot, doing whatever a spider ought
BBC
People who dislike having medical cameras snake through their body on the ends of long tubing now have a fun alternative. A new remote-controlled spider bot can scuttle around inside the colon or intestine and perform a medical inspection instead.
Rest assured that the experience sounds much more pleasant than Neo's icky encounter with an electronic bug in The Matrix. Italian scientists have tested the device inside pigs, controlling the spider bot wirelessly to diagnose serious conditions such as cancer.
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Tags
Science, Jeremy Hsu, camera, endoscope, endoscopy, fantastic voyage, health, physician, robots, spider bot, wirelessPill cameras have come up before, and a German device allowed physicians to steer a pill by moving a magnetic remote control over a patient's body. But the spider bot concept seems to kick the camera pill up a notch. Fantastic voyage ahoy!
[via the Telegraph]
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AndromedaStorm
It would feel very weird having a robotic bug crawl inside of you like you have a live bug in you.
Actually, we have tape worms, mites in our eyelashes and under our skin frequently.
But this does answer the question, "What crawled up your ass?!"
I wonder if used ones would be cheaper...