Patent ID: 8062210

Claim:
An encapsulated endoscope apparatus comprising: an encapsulated endoscope capable of moving by itself in a lumen of a body cavity and externally transmitting picked-up image data of the interior of the body cavity; a magnetically inducing device for magnetically inducing the encapsulated endoscope to drive the encapsulated endoscope in a desired direction; an extracorporeal unit comprising: an image data receiving section for receiving the image data from the encapsulated endoscope, and a lumen direction detecting section for detecting a direction of the lumen of the body cavity from the received image data, and an advancement status determining section for constantly detecting a change of the received image data with respect to time, and if there is no change of the received image data with respect to time, determining that the encapsulated endoscope has failed to advance further in the lumen, wherein the magnetically inducing device determines an insertion direction of the encapsulated endoscope based on a detection result of the lumen direction detecting section, and magnetically magnetically induces the encapsulated endoscope based on the determined insertion direction of the encapsulated endoscope and the determination result of the advancement status determining section.