Tools/methods for quantifying digestion: Medical imaging aspect

Abstract

Medical imaging bridges one of the long-standing knowledge gaps about what happens between providing a food or beverage input to a human research volunteer, and observing the output as metabolic and behavioral outcome measures. It does so by looking inside the processing interface, the gastrointestinal tract, and quantifying volumes, emptying, fluids, gas, and transport, thereby providing unprecedented insights into the digestion processes. These insights can add relevance and value to in vitro and in silico modeling of digestion. This chapter describes briefly the in vivo imaging techniques available and provides some examples of the outcome variables that can be measured.