Given Imaging

As an optional tour, 20 people headed North past the city of Haifa to visit a company called Given Imaging on February 21st. This high-tech company sells the only pill camera worldwide. The 3 PillCam products they currently have take photographs to create videos of the esophagus, small intestines, or colon. With today’s technology, colonoscopies require the insertion of a tube with a camera on the end of it as the doctor views a video display. The main problems with this are the patient’s comfort and that there is no way to view the inside of the fragile small intestine.

The pills are no larger than vitamins and have different photo frame rates depending on the part of the body to be pictured. The product of the pill is a 15 minute video analyzed by algorithms which look for suspected places of damage or growths as well as a map of the path taken through the body. As of today the colon PillCam has not been approved by the FDA so colonoscopies through this method are not yet available in the states but hopefully will be soon.

The lecture was extremely interesting and informative. I now know exactly how every piece of food travels through my body (whether I wanted to or not). We were able to view actual photos and videos from studies conducted. In one woman, an entire fly was found, still undigested after traveling through her stomach and entering the small intestine. Another funny photo showed the view from the toilet of the patient looking at it after exiting the body. Haha

I think this technology is amazing and will save many lives by encouraging people to get colonoscopies on a regular basis and more than doubling the viewable area in the body with the addition of the small intestine.