MagnaChip image sensor helps you take a good look inside yourself
By Barb Dybwad 
posted March 5th 2005 10:05AM
posted March 5th 2005 10:05AM
Talk about taking the red pill! If you really want to know what's going on in the world of your digestive tract, the pill-size camera will take you to Zion. Pill cameras have been out for a while, but doctors plan to use a new image sensor developed by South Korean semiconductor manufacturer MagnaChip to get up-to-the-minute information about what's troubling patients down below. The MagnaChip sensor is specifically developed to handle the romantically low-lit atmosphere of your intestines. This tiny disposable Gilligan can take up to 50,000 photos on its eight-hour tour through your innards, and report back wirelessly to a hard drive worn on your belt (which doubles as a fashion accessory, to boot).
Ahum.
1. Do you use these expensive cameras only once and then throw them away?
2. If not, how do you find them for recyling?
3. If found and cleaned, don't people have a problem re-using them. "God knows where this has been before".
As someone who has had a camera pushed down his throat, this is major progress compared to the ones attached to a giant tube. Hope they are disposable though
Dental and surgical instruments are consistently subjected to infectious areas of the human body, however they are sterilized using extreme heat (and other various methods) to guarantee they are sanitary for their next use.
Assuming these are re-usable, they would endure the same sterilization techniques used on other instruments to diagnose and repair.
Personally, knowing they are clean, I would much rather take one of these pills than have a ramrod down my throat.
I remember hearing about this long ago on television and it was said that they are disposable! Think about it though, it would be up to the wearer to fish through his or her toilet to pick it out--exposing them to all sorts of ... EELKKHH! Logically, they should be disposable even if I hadn't heard that it was earlier.
Thank God!
Geez, I hope they encrypt that wireless transfer. I don't want someone intercepting pictures of my intestines and posting them on the net! ;-)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/3052495.stm
UEA, finest damn university there is.