Towards the Development of a Digital Twin for Endoscopic Medical Device Testing

Abstract

Endoscopic medical devices enable minimally invasive visual screening and medical interventions in the human body. The development of such devices typically requires evaluation stages involving time- and resource-demanding in vivo animal studies and clinical trials, associated with ethical and safety considerations. The computational modeling of biological tissues and processes, medical devices, and their interactions can provide cost-effective solutions to accelerate the evaluation of endoscopic devices while minimizing the risks. This chapter describes the state-of-the-art methodology for constructing a human gastrointestinal tract (GIT) digital twin, enabling the study of device-tissue interactions. The GIT is a complex structure in terms of anatomical characteristics and processes. Current endoscopic devices include flexible and capsule endoscopes; however, both have disadvantages limiting their diagnostic or therapeutic capabilities. A digital twin of the GIT is expected to contribute to the evaluation and optimization of currently researched and future endoscopic devices, such as robotic capsule endoscopes with enhanced capabilities. The digital twin development includes reconstructing the complex intestinal geometry from medical images and constructing a multiphysics model that can replicate the in vivo physical processes. A model implementation paradigm indicates the feasibility, potentials, challenges, and impacts of the proposed concept. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.