Appearance of enhanced tissue features in narrow-band endoscopic imaging

This study was performed to examine the usefulness of medical endoscopic imaging utilizing narrow-band illumination. The contrast between the vascular pattern and the adjacent mucosa of the underside of the human tongue was measured using five narrow-band illuminations and three broadband illuminations. The results demon- strate that the pathological features of a vascular pattern are depen- dent on the center wavelength and the bandwidth of illumination. By utilizing narrow-band illumination of 415630 nm, the contrast of the capillary pattern in the superficial layer was markedly improved. This is an important benefit that is difficult to obtain with ordinary broad- band illumination. The appearances of capillary patterns on color im- ages were evaluated for three sets of filters. The narrow, band imaging (NBI) filter set (415630 nm, 445630 nm, 500630 nm) was selected to achieve the preferred appearance of the vascular patterns for clini- cal tests. The results of clinical tests in colonoscopy and esophagos- copy indicated that NBI will be useful as a supporting method for observation of the endoscopic findings of early cancer. © 2004 Society of