title: Image-enhanced endoscopy technology in the gastrointestinal tract: what is available?
abstract: Gastrointestinal malignancy accounts for approximately a fifth of all cancer deaths in the United Kingdom. By the time patients are symptomatic, lesions are often advanced, with limited treatment options available. The development of effective endoscopic therapies means that neoplastic lesions can now be treated with improved patient outcomes. This has led to a paradigm shift, whereby the aim of digestive endoscopy is to identify premalignant conditions or early neoplastic change, in order to make an impact on their natural history. This has necessitated an improvement in imaging techniques in order to identify subtle mucosal changes that may harbour precancerous cells. At present there is an array of available imaging modalities, each with implications on cost, training and lesion detection. Here we describe the scientific rationale behind the major commercially available techniques as well as offering a glimpse at possible future directions.
authors.affiliation: Nottingham Digestive Diseases Biomedical Research Unit, Nottingham University Hospital, Queens Medical Centre, Derby Road, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK. Electronic address: Sabina.beg@nhs.net.
authors.forename: Sabina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Beg
authors.affiliation: Nottingham Digestive Diseases Biomedical Research Unit, Nottingham University Hospital, Queens Medical Centre, Derby Road, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK. Electronic address: k.ragunath@nottingham.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Krish
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ragunath
mesh_terms: D016099:Endoscopy, Gastrointestinal / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D005770:Gastrointestinal Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D041981:Gastrointestinal Tract / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement; D007413:Intestinal Mucosa / Q000473:pathology; D011230:Precancerous Conditions / Q000175:diagnosis
keywords: Auto-fluorescence imaging; Confocal laser endomicroscopy; FICE; I-SCAN; Image enhanced endoscopy; Narrow band imaging