This paper presents a gastric contraction imaging system for assessment of gastric motility using a three-dimensional endoscope. Gastrointestinal diseases are mainly based on morphological abnormalities. However, gastrointestinal symptoms are sometimes apparent without visible abnormalities. One of the major factors for these diseases is abnormal gastrointestinal motility. For assessment of gastric motility, a gastric motility imaging system is needed.
Method: To assess the dynamic motility of the stomach, the proposed system measures three-dimensional gastric contractions derived from a three-dimensional profile of the stomach wall obtained with a developed three-dimensional endoscope. After obtaining contraction waves, their frequency, amplitude, and speed of propagation can be calculated using a Gaussian function.
Results: The proposed system was evaluated for three-dimensional measurements of several objects with known geometries. The results showed that the surface profiles could be obtained with an error of less than 10 percent of the distance between two different points on images. Subsequently, we evaluated the validity of a prototype system using a wave simulated model. In the experiment, the amplitude and position of waves could be measured with 1-mm accuracy.
Conclusions: The present results suggest that the proposed system can measure the speed and amplitude of contractions.
Clinical Impact: This system has low invasiveness and can assess the motility of the stomach wall directly in a three-dimensional manner. Our method can be used for examination of gastric morphological and functional abnormalities.
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