查看文章

Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) is a recent and exciting technology, which involves recording images of the entire Gastrointestinal (GI) tract including the parts of the human body never before seen outside operative surgery. The development of the capsule was first announced in Nature in 2000 by Iddan et al.(2000). Since then a number of different capsules have been launched by different vendors which varied slightly in their purpose, but retained the principle of wireless non-invasive investigation of the GI tract. It is particularly suited for computer-assisted diagnosis, as it records a large quantity of data (mostly, but not exclusively images) from the human gut, which consequently requires a time-consuming visual assessment that can be carried out only by an experienced clinician. The duration of this assessment, which involves the scrutiny of a video comprising approximately 50,000 frames, varies between one to two hours. Thus, it can be seen that in terms of time requirement, the WCE is a very costly medical imaging procedure. This opens a door for computers to aid the analysis of the WCE footage, by reducing the time required to reach the diagnosis and thus the cost of the procedure, making it a more affordable technique. This view is supported by the leading endoscopists in the United Kingdom: