Project NFCapsule: An Ingestible Sensor Pill for Eosinophilic Esophagitis Detection Based on Near-field Coupling



We present NFCapsule, a light-weight, battery-free, and ingestible biomedical sensor that can potentially enable non-invasive detection of active eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). EoE is an allergen-induced inflammatory condition of the esophagus; its diagnosis generally involves invasive, wired, and time-consuming endoscopy. In contrast, NFCapsule aims to wirelessly detect active EoE by tracking tissue impedance through an ingestible pill that the patient swallows. Specifically, recent biomedical research has shown that active EoE induces observable changes in the electrochemical impedance of the esophagus tissue due to an increase in its intercellular spacing. We design the NFCapsule pill based on RLC resonant circuits and model the target tissue as an impedance component that changes the resonant properties of the pill circuit. We show that NFCapsule maintains high classification accuracy under various practical scenarios.

Citation

  • NFCapsule: An Ingestible Sensor Pill for Eosinophilic Esophagitis Detection Based on Near-field Coupling, Junbo Zhang, Gaurav Balakrishnan, Sruti Srinidhi, Arnav Bhat, Swarun Kumar and Christopher Bettinger, SenSys 2022 [PAPER]