Computer vision-based solutions to overcome the limitations of wireless capsule endoscopy

Abstract

Endoscopic investigation plays a critical role in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. Since 2001, Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) has been available for small bowel exploration and is in continuous development. Over the last decade, WCE has achieved impressive improvements in areas such as miniaturisation, image quality and battery life. As a result, WCE is currently a very useful alternative to wired enteroscopy in the investigation of various small bowel abnormalities and has the potential to become the leading screening technique for the entire gastrointestinal tract. However, commercial solutions still have several limitations, namely incomplete examination and limited diagnostic capacity. These deficiencies are related to technical issues, such as image quality, motion estimation and power consumption management. Computational methods, based on image processing and analysis, can help to overcome these challenges and reduce both the time required by reviewers and human interpretation errors. Research groups have proposed a series of methods including algorithms for locating the capsule or lesion, assessing intestinal motility and improving image quality.

In this work, we provide a critical review of computational vision-based methods for WCE image analysis aimed at overcoming the technological challenges of capsules. This article also reviews several representative public datasets used to evaluate the performance of WCE techniques and methods. Finally, some promising solutions of computational methods based on the analysis of multiple-camera endoscopic images are presented.

Keywords:

• Wireless capsule endoscopy
• computer vision-based methods
• image quality
• power consumption management
• public datasets

Acknowledgments

The authors also thank Dr. Samuel N Adler for providing the data used in the analysis of Figure 2.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by Project No. PTDC/EMD-EMD/28960/2017” MUCAEN -Images of Multi-Camera Endoscopic Capsules: 3D Localization and Automatic Detection of Abnormal Elements” and PhD Scholarship No.2020.06592.BD, financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Portugal, in the scope of ISR, Institute of Systems and Robotics UIDB/0048/2020.