THE last thing you might be expected, or want, to do with a £318 camera is swallow it - but that is just what Martyn Fisher has done.

But the camera never lies, so the saying goes, and Mr Fisher hopes the tiny one he swallowed at the Royal Gwent Hospital will discover the truth about his medical problem.

While he went about his daily business as managing director of Cwmbran-based First Mortgage Management Limited yesterday, a device little bigger than a traditional penicillin capsule was taking thousands of images of his insides as it passed through his body.

Conventional, invasive, techniques like endoscopy and colonoscopy can identify a range of stomach and large bowel problems, but some areas, such as the small bowel, remain difficult to study.

Capsule endoscopy, as it is known, is changing that - and Mr Fisher, from Cwm-bran, is one of the first patients in Wales to undergo the procedure without having to go to a hospital in England.

The Royal Gwent is the first hospital in Wales to offer it. The patient is wired up to a series of sensors stuck to the torso and has to wear a body belt containing equipment which records the camera's images.

After swallowing the capsule camera, they can go about their normal business, returning to the hospital around eight hours later for the images to be downloaded onto a computer. A specialist can then try to identify any problems.

As with many modern procedures, the equipment involved is not cheap, but a £25,000 donation from the hospital's League of Friends has bought the kit and a first supply of capsule cameras. Each capsule costs £318. Gwent Healthcare Trust will fund the ongoing costs.

Consultant physician Dr Nimal Balaratnam said: "There have been two types of investigation for gastro-intestinal symptoms - endoscopy, which only views the stomach and the top part of the bowel, and colon-oscopy for the lower part."

"The small bowel has been difficult to study, a bit of a black hole if you like, but capsule endoscopy is the first test which gives us good pictures of it. "There are about 15 centres in England using it, but we are the first in Wales, so it is quite exciting. Previously, we had to send patients to Bristol or London. Now we will probably have referrals from the rest of Wales.

"The camera has 140? angle coverage and takes two images a second for six - eight hours. That's around 40 - 60,000 images. Once these are downloaded we can fast forward to the suspected areas and study the pictures.

"It is less invasive and uncomfortable for the patient.

"They still need to do a 12-hour fast and should avoid vigorous exercise and magnetic fields for the period when the camera is passing through, but other than that they can do what they might normally do."