Analysis of Endoscopic Electronic Image of Intramucosal Gastric Carcinoma Using a Software Program for Calculating Hemoglobin Index

摘要

Hemoglobin is the predominent pigment in the gastrointestinal mucosa, and the development of electronic endoscopy has made it possible to quantitatively measure the mucosal hemoglobin volume, by using a hemoglobin index (IHb). The aims of this study were to make a software program to calculate the IHb and then to investigate whether the mucosal IHb determined from the electronic endoscopic data is a useful marker for evaluating the color of intramucosal gastric carcinoma with regard to its value for discriminating between the histologic types. We made a software program for calculating the IHb in the endoscopic images. By using this program, the mean values of the IHb for the carcinoma (IHb-C) and those of the IHb for the surrounding non-cancerous mucosa (IHb-N) were calculated in 75 intestinal-type and 34 diffuse-type intramucosal gastric carcinomas. We then analyzed the ratio of the IHb-C to the IHb-N (C/N ratio). The C/N ratio in the intestinal-type carcinoma group was higher than that in the diffuse-type carcinoma group ( p