Computer-Based Pit Pattern Recognition Reliably Predicts Histopathology of Lesions in the Colon

Introduction: Cancer of the colon is the third most common malignant disease in the Western world. Therefore, screening programs using colonoscopy have been established which lead to a huge number of detected lesions. Not all lesions need to be removed (e.g. Hyperplastic polyps in the left colon) whilst other can not be removed safely or completely in case of malignant polyps. Based on the surface pattern of colonic crypt openings one can reliably predict the histologic diagnosis of lesion as proven by Kudo et al. However, considerable experience is needed to reliably classify lesions according to the Kudo class…