Capsule Endoscopy

What it does

Capsule Endoscopy reads a complete small-bowel capsule study: eight to twelve hours of video and tens of thousands of frames, which a physician otherwise reviews for 30 to 90 minutes. The run screens every frame and returns a short, ranked reading list in place of the whole recording.

The result divides the study into stomach, small bowel and colon with the timestamps of the pylorus and the ileocaecal valve, from which gastric and small-bowel transit times follow. It finds active bleeding and fresh blood with their likely sources such as angioectasias, and detects ulcers and erosions, angioectasias, polyps and tumours, lymphangiectasia and stenoses. Every finding carries frame indices, a bounding box and its Saurin relevance.

Intended use

Decision support for the capsule reader: a reduced key-frame list to review first, with every flagged frame linked back to its position in the video so the surrounding sequence is one click away.

Who it is for

Gastroenterologists and junior gastroenterologists who read capsule studies, capsule nurses who pre-read, and centres investigating obscure GI bleeding, iron-deficiency anaemia or small-bowel Crohn's disease. Developers use the run to attach structured findings and key frames to a capsule reading workflow.

Accepted input

• Video export: the MP4 exported by the capsule vendor's reader software.
• Frame folders: the extracted frames with their timestamps.
• Exports from the common small-bowel capsule systems are read; the system name is used when present in the export.

Requirements

Requirement	Why
The complete recording	Transit times and completeness need the pylorus and the ileocaecal valve
Frame timestamps (embedded or in the frame folder)	Findings and landmarks are reported by time and frame index
A study that reaches the colon	Without the ileocaecal valve, small-bowel transit time stays open

Debris, bubbles and dark segments lower visibility and are reported as quality limits of the study.

Optional context

Indication (overt or occult bleeding, anaemia, suspected or known Crohn's disease, polyposis) can be passed in clinical_context; the guidance uses it.

The result

Section	Content
Transit and reading summary	Stomach, small-bowel and colon segments, pylorus and ileocaecal-valve timestamps, transit times and the reduced key-frame list
Bleeding	Active bleeding and fresh blood with likely sources and frame indices, classed as Saurin P2
Lesions	Ulcers and erosions, angioectasias, polyps and tumours, lymphangiectasia and stenoses with boxes and Saurin P0, P1 or P2 relevance
Draft report	Opt-in (options.report): an English narrative that interprets the result for the reader (findings, impression, limitations); every number is checked against the findings

Standards

• Relevance: Saurin classification of small-bowel lesions: P0 no bleeding potential, P1 uncertain, P2 high bleeding potential.
• Terminology: WEO Minimal Standard Terminology (MST 3.0).
• DICOM and FHIR: key frames as VL Endoscopic Image with a KOS selection, findings in SR TID 1500, Encapsulated PDF; FHIR R4 Procedure, DiagnosticReport and Observation.