US 7,030,904 · Granted 2006-04-18

The Wireless Endoscope Camera That Fit Inside a Tube

Imagine shrinking all the electronics of a video camera small enough to fit at the tip of a thin medical tube used to look inside your body. This patent describes how to pack an image sensor, circuits, and wireless transmitters into an endoscope so doctors can see what's happening deep inside without bulky wires everywhere.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a compact imaging system designed to fit inside medical endoscopes, with flexible placement options: the image sensor can sit at the tip of the scope, the control circuits can stay in a handheld box, and wireless signals can carry the video feed between them instead of using cables. What's protected here is the specific architecture of stacking or arranging imaging components in confined spaces, plus the option to use wireless transmission rather than hard-wired connections to transmit video from inside the body to an external display.

Why it matters

Before patents like this, endoscopes were bulky instruments tethered by thick cables to external equipment, limiting a doctor's mobility and the angles they could explore. By enabling wireless transmission and compact sensor placement, this patent opened the door to smaller, more flexible medical cameras that could navigate tight spaces inside the body while sending video wirelessly to a monitor. This kind of miniaturization is foundational to modern minimally invasive surgery.

Real-world use

When a gastroenterologist performs a colonoscopy to check for polyps, they're likely using equipment descended from designs like this, where a tiny camera at the scope's tip wirelessly transmits images to a screen the doctor watches in real time.

Original USPTO abstract

A reduced area imaging device is provided for use in medical or dental instruments such as an endoscope. In a first embodiment of the endoscope, connections between imaging device elements and between a video display is achieved by hard-wired connections. In a second embodiment of the endoscope, wireless transmission is used for communications between imaging device components, and/or for transferring video ready signals to a video display. In one configuration of the imaging device, the image sensor is placed remote from the remaining circuitry. In another configuration, all of the circuitry to include the image sensor is placed in a stacked fashion at the same location. The entire imaging device can be placed at the distal tip of an endoscope. Alternatively, the image sensor can be placed remote from the remaining circuitry according to the first configuration, and control box is used which communicates with the image sensor and is placed remotely from the endoscope. Further alternatively, the imaging device can be incorporated in the housing of a standard medical camera which is adapted for use with traditional rod lens endoscopes. In any of the configurations or arrangements, the image sensor may be placed alone on a first circuit board, or timing and control circuits may be included on the first circuit board containing the image sensor. The timing and control circuits and one or more video processing boards can be placed adjacent the image sensor in a tubular portion of the endoscope, in other areas within the endoscope, in the control box, or in combinations of these location.

Patent details

Publication number: US 7,030,904
Filing date: 2001-08-13
Grant date: 2006-04-18
Assignee: Micro-Medical Devices, Inc.
Inventor(s): ADAIR EDWIN L., ADAIR JEFFREY L., ADAIR RANDALL S.
CPC class: H04N7/142

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