Magnetic marker monitoring of esophageal, gastric and duodenal transit of non-disintegrating capsules

The purpose of the: study was to investigate in detail the esophageal, gast ric and duodenal passage of non-disintegrating capsules in a fasted, health y volunteer using Magnetic Marker Monitoring (MMM). Five independent experi ments were performed. In each case the same healthy male volunteer ingested one magnetically marked capsule after fasting fort least sh. The magnetic dipole fields of the capsules were recorded by biomagnetic multichannel mea suring equipment. The positions of the capsules were calculated from the re corded data by methods established in magnetic source imaging. The esophage al, gastric and duodenal passages of the capsules were successfully reconst ructed from all recorded data sets. The spatial resolution of the capsules' three-dimensional positions in the organs of the gastrointestinal tract wa s within a range of several millimeters, with a chosen temporal resolution of up to four milliseconds, The esophageal transit times were between 3-13s , the gastric residence times were between 14-133 min and the duodenal tran sit times were between 7-245 s. The data demonstrate that Magnetic Marker M onitoring permits the detailed investigation of the gastrointestinal transi t of solids.