A novel method for medical implant in-body localization

Wireless communication medical implants are gaining an important role in healthcare systems by controlling and transmitting the vital information of the patients. Recently, Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) has become a popular method to visualize and diagnose the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Estimating the exact location of the capsule when each image is taken is a very critical issue in capsule endoscopy. Most of the common capsule localization methods are based on estimating one or more location-dependent signal parameters like TOA or RSS. However, some unique challenges exist for in-body localization due to the complex nature within the human body. In this paper, we propose a novel one-stage localization method based on spatial sparsity in 3D space. In this method, we directly estimate the location of the capsule (as the emitter) without going through the intermediate stage of TOA or signal strength estimation. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method using Monte Carlo simulation with an RF signal following the allowable power and bandwidth ranges according to the standards. The results show that the proposed method is very effective and accurate even in massive multipath and shadowing conditions.