Abstract
Innovating a new food evaluation technique based on biological information must allow us to develop high-valued food products on the occasion of food design. We particularly focus on a small intestine and assume that the digestive activity varies depending on an individual constitution, health condition and compatibility between an individual and a food. We have studied a method to estimate the activity level of peristaltic movements of a small intestine using an ultrasonograph. Ultrasonograph is widely prevalent and the systematized techniques to observe morphology and motion of digestive tracts have been highly established. They are inherently established not to investigate body organs and tissues of a healthy human for objectives being not concerned in disorders but to diagnose body organs and tissues with organic or functional disorders. However, for the new food design, we need to develop a new technique to monitor digestive activity of people with various physical conditions: healthy people, the elderly, patients with lifestyle-related diseases and patients who are critically ill. Therefore, we propose a new technique to analyze digestive activity of a small intestine by time-varying ultrasound image processing. The new technique helps us to quantitatively analyze the appearance that a small intestine transfers digested materials.
