Advanced endoscopic imaging in Barrett's oesophagus

Abstract

Barrett's oesophagus is a metaplastic condition with an inherent risk of progression to adenocarcinoma. It is essential to identify dysplastic changes within Barrett's oesophagus in order to individualise surveillance strategies and establish which patients warrant endoscopic treatment. There is a trend towards endoscopic resection of focal high-grade dysplasia followed by whole segment ablation. However, endoscopic identification of dysplastic lesions is unreliable and subjective making targeted therapy extremely difficult. In addition, the current practice of taking random quadrantic biopsies may miss dysplastic disease and intramucosal adenocarcinoma. Several advanced endoscopic imaging techniques have been described and tested in clinical trials in an effort to improve the detection of early lesions, although none are routinely used in clinical practice. In this article we will review these techniques and discuss their potential for clinical implementation. We will also discuss the potential benefits of multimodal imaging and highlight several newer techniques which have shown early promise for in vivo diagnosis.