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What is capsule endoscopy?
Capsule endoscopy is a noninvasive diagnostic procedure to visualize the inside of your digestive tract. You swallow a capsule that contains a tiny camera, a transmitter and a light. As it passes through your stomach, intestines, colon and rectum, the capsule takes thousands of pictures and transmits them to a recorder that you wear outside of your body.
Your doctor uploads the data from the recorder using a system that combines pictures into a video. These visualizations help identify problems in the digestive tract and formulate a diagnosis.
Types of Endoscopy Video Capsules
There are several types of endoscopy capsules that gastroenterologists use today. They differ based on factors such as:
Number of cameras
Quality of imaging
Recording time
Battery life
Mechanism of data transmission
One type of endoscopy capsule doesn’t use a recorder and instead has internal data storage. To collect the data, the capsule needs to be retrieved after it passes through your body. For capsules that transmit data, recovery is not necessary — these capsules are more commonly used.