Artificial Intelligence and Capsule Endoscopy: Automatic Detection of Small Bowel Blood Content Using a Convolutional Neural Network.

Introduction: Capsule endoscopy has revolutionized the management of patients with obscure gastrointestinal bleeding. Nevertheless, reading capsule endoscopy images is time-consuming and prone to overlooking significant lesions, thus limiting its diagnostic yield. We aimed to create a deep learning algorithm for automatic detection of blood and hematic residues in the enteric lumen in capsule endoscopy exams.

Methods: A convolutional neural network was developed based on a total pool of 22,095 capsule endoscopy images (13,510 images containing luminal blood and 8,585 of normal mucosa or other findings). A training dataset comprising 80% of the total pool of images was defined. The performance of the network was compared to a consensus classification provided by 2 specialists in capsule endoscopy. Subsequently, we evaluated the performance of the network using an independent validation dataset (20% of total image pool), calculating its sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and precision.

Results: Our convolutional neural network detected blood and hematic residues in the small bowel lumen with an accuracy and precision of 98.5 and 98.7%, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity were 98.6 and 98.9%, respectively. The analysis of the testing dataset was completed in 24 s (approximately 184 frames/s).

Discussion/conclusion: We have developed an artificial intelligence tool capable of effectively detecting luminal blood. The development of these tools may enhance the diagnostic accuracy of capsule endoscopy when evaluating patients presenting with obscure small bowel bleeding.