World’s First Self Propelled Endoscope, Ready to Swim Into Your Colon

Japanese researchers made another breakthrough on medical science. They’ve created the world’s first self propelled endoscopy device, a remote controlled tadpole-like instrument – called Mermaid –  that acts like a camera that can swim through human digestive track gathering images along its way out.

The Mermaid is a small endoscope that is used to gather photos of human colons while travelling through the entire track. But it don’t rely on natural muscle contraction to move inside a human body. The device moves by a magnetic machinery that is being controlled by a doctor through a remote control. Mermaid is just 0.4 inches in diameter and two inches long, making it easy to enter the human body by swallowing it or through the other end of the digestive tract.

It just take several hours for the device to travel the entire system, from esophagus to the colon. This medical breakthrough will be a great help on detecting hard-to-see ailments like Cancer to will help prevent it from getting worse.

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