Diagnostic and Therapeutic Endoscopy
Volume 6 (2000), Issue 2, Pages 77-82
doi:10.1155/DTE.6.77

Magnified Examination of Small Colorectal Polyps Using a Prototype Electronic Endoscope

O. Katayama,1 K. Namiki,1 K. Iwakoshi,2 H. Fujita,2 H. Yasuhara,2 I. Ohi,3 and S. Tomatsu3

1Clinical Laboratory, Saitamaken-Saiseikai Kurihashi Hospital, Kouemon 714-6, Kurihashi-cho, Kitakatsusika-gun, Japan
2Nasu Factory, Toshiba Corporation, Shimoishigami 1385, Ohtawara-shi, Japan
3Laboratory Tokyo Women's Medical University Daini Hospital, Tokyo 116-0011, Japan

Received 11 June 1999; Revised 29 July 1999; Accepted 20 October 1999

Copyright © 2000 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Magnifying electronic endoscopes are frequently used to evaluate the pit patterns of the colorectal mucosa, but such endoscopes suffer from a number of problems. For example, they tend to have long, hard tips and heavy controller sections. In addition, the magnified endoscopic images obtained are often quite coarse due to the small number of pixels in the charge-coupled device (CCD). As a result, at higher magnification ratios, the orientation of the field of view is easily lost. A newly developed prototype colorectal electronic endoscope (Toshiba Corporation, Tokyo) overcomes these problems. The length of the hard tip of the scope and the weight of the controller section are comparable to those of the TCE-3680MH (Toshiba Corporation). High-resolution magnified images can be obtained, because a 410,000-pixel CCD is employed. Two magnification methods are available, optical magnification and electronic zooming, permitting images to be magnified by a factor of up to 90–120 without losing the orientation of the field of view. This newly developed magnifying electronic endoscope was found to be very useful, allowing us to observe the pit patterns of the colorectal mucosa in 82 small colorectal polyps measuring 7 mm or less in diameter.