Computer Aided Diagnosis of Gastrointestinal Disorders

Abstract

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a standard and modern modality which newlineenables physicians to perform screening of the entire gastrointestinal tract (GIT). It is newlinea non-invasive technique and carried out with a miniature, optical endoscope packed newlinewithin a small capsule that is swallowed by the patient. The capsule endoscope newlineadvances through the GIT and simultaneously captures thousands of color images. A newlinerecorder is placed in a belt which is wrapped around patient s waist. Recorder newlinereceives images form the capsule wirelessly. The images saved on the recorder are newlinetransferred to a computer with special software that strings the images together to newlinecreate a video. newlineThe challenge in this procedure lies in the last phase of the examination when newlineit needs manual evaluation of complete WCE video by an expert with keen attention. newlineDepending on the frame rate of the capsule, the images captured by the capsule ranges newlinebetween 50000 to 100000. Examining such huge amount of frames with diverse newlinecontent is a complicated task. Moreover, image interpretation by human expert is newlinesubjective. Fatigue and complexity of the images, may lead to extensive variations newlineacross different interpreters.