Using ultrasound as a communication scheme for wireless capsule endoscopy

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) has been established as an alternative to traditional video endoscopy because it has several advantages over traditional methods. For example, it can ameliorate the suffering of patients as it does not need intubation, and it can examine the whole small intestine, which cannot be done by traditional methods. However, WCE has one major limitation, which is the picture quality. Traditional endoscopy using a camera attached to a cable can provide high definition 1920*1080 pixels video at 60 frames per second, while most current WCE solutions can only provide video resolution at 320*240 pixels and a frame rate of 2 frames per second. The bottleneck of transmitting high-quality video for WCE is its communication method. Most current WCE solutions use radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic-based communication which limits transmit power and bandwidth. The data rate that can be achieved is less than 1 Mbps, which is not feasible to support high definition video transmission. Using ultrasound as the communication channel is an alternative to RF communication as it has lower attenuation in the human body, and it does not have regulation limits from the federal communications commission (FCC). We explored the use of ultrasound to produce in-body communications. Specifically, we used orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to produce the ultrasound signal and an array receiver to record ultrasound. The proposed method achieved 15 Mbps data rate at a bit error rate (BER) on the order of 10^(-4). At this data rate, we could transmit compressed high definition video with the help of channel coding. In addition, we implemented the transmitter with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and connected it to the camera to enable real-time video transmission. An ultrasound imaging research platform was used as the receiver. In this way, visually error-free uncompressed video transmission was verified.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Kou, Zhengchang

Contributors dc:contributor

• Oelze, Michael L

• Ultrasound
• Communication

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2020 Zhengchang Kou

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109596

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/109596