title: Estimation of blood flow in the upper gastrointestinal tract by analysis of endoscopic true color images.
abstract: A method is presented that estimates the local blood flow in the mucosa of the organs of the upper gastrointestinal tract; the method is based on the analysis of endoscopic true-color images. The quantity of blood flow is approximated by the estimation of the hemoglobin concentration in the mucosa. The first step of our algorithm consists of a neural segmentation, which excludes artifacts of the images that interfere with further computation. Next, a transformation of the image data is performed within the RGB-color space in order to obtain an estimation of the blood distribution, which is independent of the local brightness in the images. Finally the quantity of blood flow is estimated on the basis of physical laws of reflectance spectroscopy. Our method is characterized by the following features: 1) It computes an estimation of the blood flow for a whole endoscopic image; as such it is more powerful than local measuring methods; 2) Our method does not need any modifications of the endoscopic equipment; and 3) The use of our method does not put any additional strain on the patient.
authors.affiliation: Medical Clinic II, Klinik Charité, Alexander-Humboldt-Univ. Berlin, Schumannstrasse 20-22, D 10098 Berlin, F.R.G.
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Jacoby
authors.forename: F M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Zwiebel
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Herpers
authors.forename: K H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Englmeier
mesh_terms: D003116:Color; D004064:Digestive System / Q000098:blood supply*; D016099:Endoscopy, Gastrointestinal; D005753:Gastric Mucosa / Q000098:blood supply; D005773:Gastroscopy; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D012039:Regional Blood Flow; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted