Clinical Experience of Digital Image Processing on Endoscopic Diagnosis of Esophageal Diseases

We performed image processings on pictures obtained from patients with esophageal diseases by using an electronic endoscope TV-Endoscope TGI-70D (Toshiba Co., Ltd.) and a digital endoscopic image processor EIP-70A (Toshiba Co., Ltd.). By using the EIP-70A, it becomes possible to perform a band pass filtering as structural enhancement and a histogram flattening as color enhancement in real-time. The band pass filtering clarified the fine vascular pattern of the esophago-gastric junction, the fine regenerative mucosal pattern of the reflux esophagitis and the three-dimentional structure of the advanced esophageal cancer. The histogram flattening exaggerated the redness in lesions of the advanced esophageal cancer, the O-II b typed esophageal cancer and the ectopic gastric mucosa of the upper esophagus.