Continuous accurate pH measurements of human GI tract using a digital pH-ISFET sensor inside a wireless capsule

This paper describes the design and implementation of a reliable, low-power pH-ISFET sensor inside a wireless diagnostic capsule for monitoring the pH of the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The sensitive element of the pH sensing device was an ion-sensitive FET (ISFET) with a threshold voltage that varies by concentration of hydrogen ions. An Ag/AgCl reference electrode that was surrounded by gel (mixed KCl) was applied in this pH-sensing device. An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that is designed by a very large scale integration (VLSI) architecture was used as the interface between the pH sensing device and a wireless transceiver. Experimental results demonstrated that the pH sensitivity and operating range of the pH sensing device was 44.94 mV/pH and 1–11 pH; the device is linear. With the 18-bit Analog/Digital converter (ADC) module in the ASIC, the resolution could achieve 11,780 bits/pH. Moreover, the power dissipation of the pH-sensing device was only 0.048 mW while working in intermittent mode (duty cycle = 20%). Results from human experiments showed that this pH sensing device can work reliably for 136 h, and the pH data of sampled from the human GI tract can be received by a portable data recorder outside the human body in real time.