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It's clear that the Fraunhofer researchers didn't set out to hit this milestone in camera technology. What they were really interested in was trying to improve upon endoscope technology. An endoscope involves a camera at the tip of a tube. The tube contains a wire that transmits the image back to a computer. The tube also serves as a way to physically manipulative the camera to snake it through the gastrointestinal tract, for instance. Typical endoscopes cost around $25,000-30,000 so they must be reused many times. Because the endoscope is going in and out of people's bodies, it must be cleaned and sterilized between each use, which just drives up the cost of maintaining the instrument. It's no wonder that hospitals charge more than $2,000 per endoscopy. All of this, however, would change if the camera was cheap enough to throw away.