Essentia / Devices / MCCE

Device Lab 15

MCCE

A 100 mm by 100 mm N42 block on a six-axis manipulator. m squared of dipole moment and dissipates nothing at all.

Also called: Capsule Endoscopy, Magnetically Controlled Capsule. Arabic: كبسولة التنظير المغناطيسية. Device Lab 15 of 69 in BMEssentia Medical City, 2 configurations.

Overview: the configurations

How it works: the main parts

What each part does, from the MCCE lessons in the 3D Device Lab.

Field command console

The console is where a person asks this machine for something, and the first honest thing to notice about it is what it will not accept. There is no control here that asks for a pull of so many millinewtons.

Field solution and pose estimator

This unit is the one that answers the question nobody can measure: where is the capsule and what is it experiencing. It takes the commanded source geometry, the image, and the reference field reading, and produces a pose.

External permanent-magnet head

890 kilograms and consumes nothing. It produces its field the moment it exists and it will still be producing it when the building loses power, when the software crashes, and when everyone has gone home.

Six-axis manipulator

The manipulator is the only actuator in this configuration. The field source cannot be turned up or down, so every command the operator gives becomes a motion of six joints, and the quality of the control is the quality of the arm.

Keeper and parking enclosure

The keeper is the closest thing this configuration has to an off switch, and it is a steel can. Parked inside it, the head still produces its field; the difference is that the steel offers the flux a much easier path than the air outside, so what escapes into the room collapses.

Gravity-independent retract accumulator

An unswitchable source needs a way to leave the patient when the electricity does not. This cylinder is that way: a charged gas accumulator on the fore link whose only job is to drive the head clear without any power at all.

Capsule internal magnet

This is the smallest component in the device and everything else exists to talk to it. A cylinder of neodymium iron boron eight millimetres across and five long, sitting off-centre inside a swallowed shell, and its dipole moment is the entire interface between a person and a machine standing outside them.

Capsule shell

The shell is the boundary between a person and a machine, and it is the only part of this device that goes inside anybody. Eleven millimetres across, twenty-six long, and it has to hold a magnet, an optical head, two cells and a radio while being swallowable.

Explore it in the Device Lab

• Torque follows the field, force follows its gradient: Write the two relations down and then write their distance laws beside them. Turning moment is the cross product of the capsule moment with the field; force is the gradient of their dot product. For a dipole source the field is 2k·M/r³ and its axial gradient is exactly three times the field divided by the separation.
• Two envelopes, 231.50 mm and 724.91 mm: Set each authority equal to what it has to beat. 91 micronewton metre righting torque produced by the capsule’s own centre-of-mass offset. Solve each for separation.
• Stable in orientation, unstable in translation: 57 hertz undamped at the reference geometry. Being drawn up a gradient is not restoring at all.
• The control gain goes as the fifth power of closeness: Differentiate the attraction with respect to separation. Since it goes as the inverse fourth power, its derivative is minus four times itself over the separation, so the sensitivity of the control to a millimetre of source motion follows the inverse fifth power.
• What a source can and cannot be asked to stop doing: One of these sources answers a zero command in a switching interval. 91 to release the aim, at 100 millimetres per second.

Common faults and what to check

Most reported device problems (FDA MAUDE)

Raw counts of adverse event reports for this device type (FDA product code NEZ, QKZ), all years. Not adjusted for the number of units in use, so they show what gets reported, not failure rates. Report text is never copied.

Planned maintenance checks

From the BMEssentia procedure library: every 12 months, about 60 minutes, electrical class I, applied part type BF.

Test instruments: Manufacturer's capsule test tool; Gaussmeter (manufacturer's).

Recent FDA recalls

From the FDA recall database (openFDA), newest first, imported 2026-10-22. 6 recalls on record for this device type. Recall text is the FDA's public text; each recall links to the official record.

Learn it, see it in 3D, ask about it

• Ask Essentia about the MCCE: answers from named sources, with the device open in its 3D Device Lab beside the answer.
• The MCCE on the BMEssentia Platform: the Device Library course, 13 sections from physics to maintenance.
• BMEssentia Medical City: Device Lab 15, the MCCE fully assembled in 3D, with lab tasks and the simulations.

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