3D reconstruction of GI tract texture surface using Capsule Endoscopy Images

Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (CE) is a novel technique to screen the entire gastrointestinal (GI) tract, especially the small bowel. It was invented by Given Imaging in 2000 to solve the problem that the conventional tools cannot explore the entire small bowel. As it is non-invasive, reliable, and safe, it has been widely applied around the world. Although the clinical findings of CE are promising, there still exist some limitations. The main problem is that it produces over 50,000 images during one examination. It is a highly time-consuming and labor-intensive task to inspect such long video for clinicians. Moreover, CE images are lack of prominent characteristics, which make it difficult to diagnose diseases even for an experienced clinician. So it is desirable and necessary to develop a tool to assist clinicians during diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a method to reconstruct the 3D texture surface of GI tract using single CE image. We applied Shape from Shading (SfS) technique to represent the surface of GI tract using 2D CE images. It is a novel way to view the abnormalities, especially for polyp, which can lead to a more efficient examination. Preliminary experiments on real CE images have been conducted. The results show that our method achieved promising performance.