Hydro-jet propelled colonoscopy: proof of concept in a phantom colon.

Background: Colonoscopy is a widely used and effective procedure, but it often causes patient discomfort and its execution requires considerable skill and training. We demonstrate an alternative approach to colonoscope propulsion with the potential to minimise patient discomfort by reducing the forces exerted on the colonic wall and mesentery, and to reduce the level of skill required for execution.

Methods: A prototype colonoscopic device is described, consisting of a tethered capsule that is propelled and manoeuvred through a water-filled colon (hydro-colonoscopy) by an array of water jets.

A hydraulically driven colonoscope.

Background: Conventional colonoscopy requires a high degree of operator skill and is often painful for the patient. We present a preliminary feasibility study of an alternative approach where a self-propelled colonoscope is hydraulically driven through the colon.

Methods: A hydraulic colonoscope which could be controlled manually or automatically was developed and assessed in a test bed modelled on the anatomy of the human colon.

Low-rank prior in single patches for nonpointwise impulse noise removal.

This paper introduces a low-rank prior in small oriented noise-free image patches. Considering an oriented patch as a matrix, a low-rank matrix approximation is enough to preserve the texture details in the optimally oriented patch. Based on this prior, we propose a single-patch method within a generalized joint low-rank and sparse matrix recovery framework to simultaneously detect and remove nonpointwise random-valued impulse noise (e.