A MEMS-BASED MICRO-BIOPSY ACTUATOR FOR CAPSULAR ENDOSCOPE USING LIGA PROCESS

This paper presents a LiGA (German acronym for LIthografie, Galvanoformung, Abformung) based micro biopsy actuator for the capsular endoscope. The proposed fabricated actuator aims to extract sample tissues inside small gastric intestines, that cannot be reached by conventional biopsy. The actuator size is 10 mm in diameter and 1.8 mm in length. The mechanism is of a slider-crank type. The actuator consists of trigger, rotational module, and micro biopsy tool. The core components are fabricated using the LiGA process, for overcoming the limitations in accuracy of conventional precision machining.