New method for quantitative evaluation of colonic cleanliness to assess different preparation protocols as to improve diagnostic accuracy of video colonoscopy

Introduction: Poor bowel preparation occurs in more than 20 percent of all screening colonoscopic examinations. Suboptimal bowel preparation during screening colonoscopy is associated with a decreased ability to detect adenomas. The evaluation of colonic cleanliness needs to be quantitative to adequately compare different bowel preparation protocols and to avoid sources of error arising from subjectivity. Our main purpose was to find a metric that can quantitatively classify the cleanliness of the colon via image processing based on endoscopic video records. Patients and Methods: A specific color bar similarly t…