An investigation on gastric emptying behavior of apple in the dynamic digestion model ARK® and its validation using MRI of human subjects - A pilot study

The employment of dynamic digestion models for understanding the digestion behavior of foods has become an emerging trend in recent times, as the in vivo techniques used currently pose safety and ethical concerns. On the other hand, it is equally important to validate the mentioned digestion models, so that they can aid in assessing various aspects of digestion. Hence, this study was planned to investigate the gastric emptying behavior of apples in a 3D printed stomach in vitro dynamic digestion model artificial stomach response kit. Further, the obtained results are validated by studying the gastric emptying behavior of apples in healthy and adult human individuals. Gastric emptying trends in both the in vivo and in vitro trials showed close half emptying times, i.e., 51.00 +/- 7.54 and 57.84 +/- 4.41 min respectively. Also, T-lag, K, beta obtained were similar in both the in vivo and in vitro experiments. In addition to that, a strong positive correlation is noticed between the in vivo and in vitro trials, r = 0.99. Upon successful validation with foods having diversified properties, the ARK (R) model can be complementary for in vivo techniques to understand the gastric emptying behavior and other digestion aspects of foods.