Bioengineering Banter: Microscale transmitters

Images of "Fantastic Voyage" were going through my head as I read this current article in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Scientists have recently made a microscale capsule containing a transmitter (also known as a "smart pill") that can broadcast its location in the body. While there is no crew steering this capsule, it is an important advance in bioimaging as existing methods for communicating with electromagnetic & imaging devices suffer from limitations brought on by surrounding tissues. While a "smart pill" can already image and access different organs, this new development is can communicate in a "location-specific manner" while giving readings on "pH, pressure, temperature, electrical potential or concentration of certain analytes, or execute interventions such as releasing drugs, applying electrical stimulation or ablating tissue".

Read about it here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-017-0129-2

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-017-0129-2

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