A Novel Multibiopsy Mechanism Embedded in a Capsule Endoscope for Colonoscopy This paper presents a novel multibiopsy mechanism embedded in a capsule endoscope. The biopsy device can perform multiple samplings and save the tissue separately for each sampling. It consists of a trigger with a lever, a cutter, a storage module and drivetrain of gear transmission connected with a torsion spring. The cutter is driven via one small gear which can be driven at higher speed by a larger gear connected with the torsional spring. The basic idea to sample the suspected pathological tissue from the lining of the colon is that the cutter with sharp edge rotates at high speed so that the tissue pressed to the surface of capsule can be cut where a part of blade skims out of surface of capsule. Owing to the cutting can be finished within very short time, the tissue can be avoided to be teared as it happen sometimes in traditional biopsy. A trigger can be activated via a lever multiple times. In addition, this method is expected to be used in tumor resection through multiple samplings. In this paper the basic principle of the new multibiopsy mechanism is analyzed as well as a preliminary prototype made by a 3D printer is built, and finally the feasibility of the proposed biopsy device was preliminarily verified via taking biospies from a piece of pig skin.

Design of A Novel Biopsy Capsule Robot with Anchoring Function for Intestinal Tract This paper presents a biopsy capsule robot with anchoring function inside the intestinal tract. The proposed biopsy capsule consists of three modules: biopsy module, anchoring module and decoupledrive module. The design of the biopsy module and anchoring module is based on the eccentric cam mechanism and ratchet mechanism. The structure design and motion analysis of the biopsy mechanism and anchoring mechanism is presented. The designed decoupledrive module consists of two parts: a magneticdrive shaft and two elasticpawls. Benefiting from the combination of the elasticpawls on the decoupledrive module and the ratchets on the two function modules (i.e. biopsy and anchoring module), the two function modules can be driven by a single actuator, which can further help reduce the size of biopsy capsule robots and achieve miniaturization. The design concept and working principles of the proposed biopsy capsule are introduced in this paper and are verified by a prototype with the diameter of 16mm and length of 24mm that successfully integrates the three modules.