Researchers at Duke University have developed a tool that can be installed in regular toilets to analyze your stool samples. If adopted, this tool could provide valuable information to gastroenterologists.
Although not very appetizing, stools are still used today in medicine to detect a number of diseases. Indeed, the shape, color or texture of our excrement can provide valuable clues to the state of health of our body. Also, for several years, researchers have been developing ways to quickly analyze this waste as soon as it arrives in the toilet.
A team from Duke University recently presented their approach at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW). Their tool would aim to take images of stool samples in pipe systems for analysis . This data could then be used to track and manage chronic gastrointestinal health issues such as inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome.
Generally, gastroenterologists should rely on patients' self-reported information to help determine the cause of their health problems. However, these are not always very reliable .
"Patients often cannot remember what their bowel movements were like or how often they go to the bathroom, which is part of the process standard monitoring", says Deborah Fisher, who is developing the project.“ Smart Toilet technology will allow us to gather the long-term information needed to enable rapid diagnosis and follow-up of chronic gastrointestinal problems “.
Fisher and his team developed this tool by analyzing 3328 stool images . All these images were annotated by gastroenterologists according to a recognized standard scale used in clinical settings. The researchers then used a deep learning algorithm to scan all of these images and allow the artificial intelligence system to classify each one.
As a result, their machine learning network tool was able to correctly classify a stool sample in 85.1% of the time . In other words, the tool would be precise enough to be used as a tool for monitoring gastrointestinal health.
In practice, we wouldn't need to redo all the plumbing. This new technology could indeed be installed later in the pipes of an existing toilet. Dr. Sonia Grego, director of the Duke Smart Toilet Lab, says she is confident that patients are willing to use this technology. All you have to do is flush the toilet. Technology will do the rest.
For now, this is just a prototype. The researchers are currently developing other functionalities such as stool sampling for the analysis of biochemical markers likely to provide more precise information on a particular disease.
