Abstract
Navigation is an important feature needed for medical insertion procedures. It is required to guide the medical device in the right direction at the right time. Navigation techniques used in the Wireless Capsule Endoscopy and conventional endoscopy fields are based on image-guided systems that require a large amount of data to be transferred and processed computationally. These issues increase system complexity as well as the overall system and procedure costs. Moreover, these systems cannot provide the required information in dark or liquid areas. To improve the medical internal inspections capabilities, we present a pressure direction measurement system that can be implemented for a capsule endoscope; ordinary endoscopy; and any other insertion procedure where navigation and safety are required. The system can operate in dark and liquid areas because no visualization is required. The system consists of a pressure sensor placed on a semi-hemisphere on top of the steering device to detect azimuth and polar angle variation according to the direction at any differentiable path.