Novel endoscopic imaging techniques toward in vivo observation of living cancer cells in the gastrointestinal tract.

It is now possible to perform microscopic imaging of living cells from both normal mucosa and malignant tissue in the gastrointestinal tract. Endocytoscopy is a catheter-type contact endoscope that has more than 1000-fold magnifying power and can pass through the working channel of the straight-view endoscope. In esophageal cells, the nucleus, cell body, and even the nucleolus were clearly distinguished with high-resolution images comparable with those of conventional cytology. This novel technology has the potential to provide histologic diagnoses during endoscopic examinations, similar to those obtained currently by conventional histology techniques.