Autofluorescence Imaging for Diagnosing Intestinal Disorders

Abstract

Image enhanced endoscopies, such as narrow band imaging (NBI) and autofluorescence imaging (AFI), were recently developed and clinically applied for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal diseases. From the results of recent clinical studies, these novel technologies appear to be useful for detecting, as well as evaluating, gastrointestinal disorders. While NBI can emboss the vessel structure, AFI can capture fluorescence emitted from intestinal tissues and also describe the area in which the fluorescence intensity is reduced as a magenta color on the monitor. This device produces an excitation light source of 390-470 nm and delivers it to the tissue surface through an endoscope. The low light level autofluorescence emitted from the tissue and white light reflection are detected and amplified by two high sensitivity CCDs. The fluorescence image is then transformed into a green hue, while the reflection image is transformed into red and blue hues. Thereafter, the images are displayed on a monitor as color images in real-time (Figure 1) (Nakashima A, et al. 2001).