Patent ID: 8388517

Claim:
An in-vivo information acquisition system equipped with an in-vivo information acquisition apparatus and an external control apparatus, wherein: the in-vivo information acquisition apparatus introduced into inner part of a subject comprises: an in-vivo information acquisition section configured to acquire in-vivo information about the subject, a radio transmission section configured to transmit the in-vivo information acquired by the in-vivo information acquisition section, via a radio signal, a power supply section configured to supply electric power to the in-vivo information acquisition section and the radio transmission section, a signal detection section configured to detect a control signal from the external control apparatus, and a power supply control section configured to control state of power supply from the power supply section to the in-vivo information acquisition section and the radio transmission section by toggle operation based on a detection result produced by the signal detection section; and the external control apparatus which generates the control signal comprises: a control signal generating section configured to generate the control signal, an operation switch used to give a command to start generating the control signal, a state determination section configured to determine the state of power supply of the in-vivo information acquisition apparatus, and a signal generation control section configured to control generation of the control signal based on the command from the operation switch and a determination result produced by the state determination section; wherein the state determination section detects the state of power supply of the in-vivo information acquisition section by detecting the radio signal from the radio transmission section and the signal generation control section controls the control signal generating section to generate the control signal intermittently a plurality of times until the state of power supply of the in-vivo information acquisition section determined by the state determination section changes.