It sounds like something out of a James Bond movie: a pill-size gadget equipped with two cameras, each of which takes seven photos a second and transmits them wirelessly to a nearby storage device.

But the only thing this gadget will spy on is your esophagus. Known as the Pillcam ESO, the high-tech capsule is gaining fans among patients and doctors as a comfortable, convenient alternative to endoscopy.

“It’s ridiculously easy to use,” said Dr. Blair Lewis, a gastroenterologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.

Dr. Lewis began using the device four months ago to diagnose a range of esophageal disorders, including gastro esophageal reflux disease, esophagitis, and esophageal cancer.

Before that, Dr. Lewis used an endoscope, essentially a long tube with a camera mounted on one end. Endoscopy is much more involved and invasive than the Pillcam. Patients must be sedated, which means they miss a day of work, even though the procedure itself takes only half an hour or so.

With the Pillcam ESO, patients simply swallow the device, which is the size of a large vitamin tablet. It works its way down the esophagus, usually reaching the stomach in fewer than 10 minutes.

During that time, it shoots a few thousand photos, which are transmitted to a device where software turns the images into a kind of movie reel of the patient’s esophagus, allowing the doctor to review the results immediately.

The procedure is painless – the patient feels nothing. Within a day or two, the Pillcam leaves the body in a bowel movement. The tablets, which cost $450 apiece, are not reused.

Since the Food and Drug Administration approved Pillcam ESO in November, the device has been adopted by a small but growing number of gastroenterologists across the country.

“It’s much easier on the patient,” says University of Maryland Medical Center gastroenterologist Eric Goldberg, one of the first doctors in the area to use the device.

The procedure costs about $1,000. An upper endoscopy, by contrast, costs about $1,600, not including time lost from work. Because most insurance companies do not cover Pillcam ESO, patients might have to pay for it themselves. Givens Imaging is trying to persuade Medicare to pay for the procedure. Once Medicare covers it, most other insurance companies probably will follow suit.

This device is the second in the Pillcam series. The first, Pillcam SB, has been used since 2001 to detect ailments of the small intestine. More than 170,000 patients around the world have undergone the procedure.

Pillcam does have some disadvantages. Unlike an endoscope, it cannot be outfitted to take tissue samples – an important consideration if the patient might have cancer.

There is also a chance that the Pillcam can get stuck making its way through the gastrointestinal tract.

Dr. Goldberg says this happens in one of every 200 patients. When it does, doctors must extract it with an endoscope equipped with a small basket or net. If it lodges in a particularly difficult spot, the doctor might have to perform surgery to remove it.