Abstract
With the recent advances in magnifying scopes, it has become possible to predict the histological type of a lesion or the depth of a cancer according to its surface microstructure (pit pattern). We have also reported that endocytoscopy (EC), an ultra-high magnification system, is useful to observe not only the structural atypia but also the cellular atypia in colorectal lesions. Although the first prototype was a probe type, an integrated type, the system embeded to a tip of an endoscope, was developed in 2005, which enables ordinary view, low power magnification up to x80, and high power magnification of x450 in vivo. An integrated EC also enables us to observe the bloodstream with Narrow Band Imaging (NBI) mode. Endocytoscopic pathology, which is beyond the level of optical biopsy, represents diagnostics for living cells which is clearly different from the conventional histopathology for the specimens after formalin fixation.
