Abdominal Belt Listens for Irritable Bowels

Jun-12-18 An acoustic sensor designed for detecting termites could also be used to identify irritable bowel syndrome.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is traditionally diagnosed via a colonoscopy, but the prototype belt from a team at the University of Western Australia could change that. The belt, equipped with sensors originally created to track termites by sound, was used to record the bowel sounds of healthy and IBS-inflicted volunteers. Those recordings were then subjected to artificial intelligence, which created an acoustic index that can be used to identify healthy guts versus IBS patients.

In tests, the belt offered a diagnostic accuracy of about 87 percent, and the team believes that rate could be improved.

Image credit: Blausen.com staff

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