The ingestible thermal monitoring system

A thermal monitoring system for measuring body core temperatures was developed that contains an ingestible pill which is both commandable and rechargeable, and which uses magnetic induction for command and telemetry as well as for recharging. The pill electronics consist of a battery power source, a crystal-controlled oscillator that drives a small air coil, and a command detection circuit. The resulting 262-kHz magnetilc field can be easily detected from a distance of 1 m. The pill oscillator functions at voltages less than 1 V, supplied by a single Ni-Cd battery, which must be recharged after 72 h of continuous transmission. The pill can be recalibrated periodically to compensate for long-term drift.