The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the Quality of Upper Gastrointestinal (GI) Endoscopy

Summary

Oesophageal and gastric cancer are two of the six less survivable cancers, responsible for half of cancer deaths and a quarter of cancer cases. Six cancer charities have called for focused efforts to improve the poor outcomes for these cancers that have changed little in recent years (lesssurvivablecancers.org.uk). Improving endoscopy standards to minimise missed cancer cases will be an important contribution to improving oesophageal and gastric cancer outcomes.

Endoscopy, flexible telescopic examination of the oesophagus, stomach and duodenum, is the method of choice for diagnosing upper gastrointestinal (UGI) cancer and its main purpose is usually to exclude cancer as the cause of peoples' symptoms. Over 1,000,000 endoscopies are undertaken each year in the UK but the test is not perfect and sometimes cancer or an abnormality that will turn into cancer is not found. When this happens, the cancer is known as a post-endoscopy upper gastrointestinal cancer (PEUGIC) or a 'missed' cancer. This is unfortunately a relatively common occurrence and 9% of people with UGI cancer in the UK (approximately 1400 per year) had an endoscopy that did not find their cancer in the three years before diagnosis.

All people who undergo endoscopy will benefit from this research. Reducing the future number of cancers that are missed at endoscopy in England will be a direct benefit but preventing missed cancers will also help to improve the general quality of endoscopy.

The rate of missing cancer at colonoscopy (post-colonoscopy colorectal cancer) has fallen from 9% in 2005 to 6.5% in 2013, unlike the PEUGIC rate that has increased between 2009 and 2018. Research has shown that endoscopists with longer procedure times and those who take more than four pictures during endoscopy have a higher abnormality detection rate for early cancer.

In an attempt to help endoscopists, a novel AI called Cerebro has been developed as an endoscopy quality control tool. Cerebro gives the endoscopist real time feedback during an endoscopy, and aids them in the four following areas (Endovision AI 2022)

1. Ensures inspection completeness prompting the endoscopist on which areas have been missed.
2. Calculates the time spent at each landmark ensuring at least a 7-minute examination time.
3. Provides automatic photodocumentation which allows for better reporting
4. Prompts the endoscopist when further insufflation or washing is needed to improve views Variation in endoscopy quality in the UK will contribute to variations in missed cancer frequency and efforts to improve endoscopy quality, including using AI to standardise endoscopy quality, will hopefully reduce the frequency of PEUGIC in future and improve upper GI cancer outcomes. However, in order for AI use in endoscopy to be established its value in improving the quality of views needs studying.

Conditions

• Endoscopy, Digestive System

Interventions

DEVICE

Cerebro endoscopy quality control tool

The AI provides feedback via a separate screen to the endoscopists to inform them which part of the upper GI tract have been adequately visualised.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Nigel Trudgill, MbChB · Sandwell General Hospital

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

DIAGNOSTIC

Masking

NONE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

100 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2023-06-01

Primary Completion

2025-06-01

Completion

2025-06-01

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations