Smartphone-Based Endoscope System for Advanced Point-of-Care Diagnostics: Feasibility Study

Jung Kweon Bae; Andrey Vavilin; Joon S You; Hyeongeun Kim; Seon Young Ryu; Jeong Hun Jang; Woonggyu Jung

doi:10.2196/mhealth.7232

Smartphone-Based Endoscope System for Advanced Point-of-Care Diagnostics: Feasibility Study

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2017 Jul 27;5(7):e99. doi: 10.2196/mhealth.7232.

Authors

Jung Kweon Bae¹, Andrey Vavilin¹, Joon S You¹, Hyeongeun Kim¹, Seon Young Ryu², Jeong Hun Jang³, Woonggyu Jung¹

Affiliations

¹ Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan, Republic Of Korea.
² Pohang University of Science and Technology, Creative IT Engineering, Pohang, Republic Of Korea.
³ Ajou University Hospital, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Suwon, Republic Of Korea.

Abstract

Background: Endoscopic technique is often applied for the diagnosis of diseases affecting internal organs and image-guidance of surgical procedures. Although the endoscope has become an indispensable tool in the clinic, its utility has been limited to medical offices or operating rooms because of the large size of its ancillary devices. In addition, the basic design and imaging capability of the system have remained relatively unchanged for decades.

Objective: The objective of this study was to develop a smartphone-based endoscope system capable of advanced endoscopic functionalities in a compact size and at an affordable cost and to demonstrate its feasibility of point-of-care through human subject imaging.

Methods: We developed and designed to set up a smartphone-based endoscope system, incorporating a portable light source, relay-lens, custom adapter, and homebuilt Android app. We attached three different types of existing rigid or flexible endoscopic probes to our system and captured the endoscopic images using the homebuilt app. Both smartphone-based endoscope system and commercialized clinical endoscope system were utilized to compare the imaging quality and performance. Connecting the head-mounted display (HMD) wirelessly, the smartphone-based endoscope system could superimpose an endoscopic image to real-world view.

Results: A total of 15 volunteers who were accepted into our study were captured using our smartphone-based endoscope system, as well as the commercialized clinical endoscope system. It was found that the imaging performance of our device had acceptable quality compared with that of the conventional endoscope system in the clinical setting. In addition, images captured from the HMD used in the smartphone-based endoscope system improved eye-hand coordination between the manipulating site and the smartphone screen, which in turn reduced spatial disorientation.

Conclusions: The performance of our endoscope system was evaluated against a commercial system in routine otolaryngology examinations. We also demonstrated and evaluated the feasibility of conducting endoscopic procedures through a custom HMD.

Keywords: low-resource settings; mobile health; point-of-care systems; smartphone-based endoscope.

©Jung Kweon Bae, Andrey Vavilin, Joon S You, Hyeongeun Kim, Seon Young Ryu, Jeong Hun Jang, Woonggyu Jung. Originally published in JMIR Mhealth and Uhealth (http://mhealth.jmir.org), 27.07.2017.