Narrow band imaging versus white-light: What is best for computer-assisted diagnosis of celiac disease?

Recent developments of specialized endoscopic hardware with enhanced visualization capabilities such as narrow band imaging have been shown to improve the diagnostic accuracy in clinical practice. The current state-of-the-art in computer-assisted diagnosis of celiac disease (CD) in flexible endoscopy uses data captured under the modified immersion technique with white-light illumination. In this work, the potential benefits of the modified immersion technique using narrow band imaging for automated diagnosis is studied. We provide convincing experimental evidence that the imaging modality has a significant impact on the underlying feature distribution of general purpose image representations. Consequently, the design of systems for automated diagnosis requires the consideration of several factors in this context. We present a large experimental setup studying the most relevant factors for automated diagnosis of CD.