A novel AI device for real-time optical characterization of colorectal polyps

Accurate in-vivo optical characterization of colorectal polyps is key to select the optimal treatment regimen during colonoscopy. However, reported accuracies vary widely among endoscopists. We developed a novel intelligent medical device able to seamlessly operate in real-time using conventional white light (WL) endoscopy video stream without virtual chromoendoscopy (blue light, BL). In this work, we evaluated the standalone performance of this computer-aided diagnosis device (CADx) on a prospectively acquired dataset of unaltered colonoscopy videos. An international group of endoscopists performed optical characterization of each polyp acquired in a prospective study, blinded to both histology and CADx result, by means of an online platform enabling careful video assessment. Colorectal polyps were categorized by reviewers, subdivided into 10 experts and 11 non-experts endoscopists, and by the CADx as either "adenoma" or "non-adenoma". A total of 513 polyps from 165 patients were assessed. CADx accuracy in WL was found comparable to the accuracy of expert endoscopists (CADx_WL/Exp; OR 1.211 [0.766-1.915]) using histopathology as the reference standard. Moreover, CADx accuracy in WL was found superior to the accuracy of non-expert endoscopists (CADx_WL/NonExp; OR 1.875 [1.191-2.953]), and CADx accuracy in BL was found comparable to it (CADx_BL/CADx_WL; OR 0.886 [0.612-1.282]). The proposed intelligent device shows the potential to support non-expert endoscopists in systematically reaching the performances of expert endoscopists in optical characterization.