Advances in upper gastrointestinal endoscopy

The rapidly moving technological advances in gastrointestinal endoscopy have enhanced an endoscopist’s ability to diagnose and treat lesions within the gastrointestinal tract. The improvement in image quality created by the advent of high-definition and magnification endoscopy, alongside image enhancement, produces images of superb quality and detail that empower the endoscopist to identify important lesions that have previously been undetectable. Additionally, we are now seeing technologies emerge, such as optical coherence tomography and confocal laser endomicroscopy, that allow the endoscopist to visualize individual cells on a microscopic level and provide a real time, in vivo histological assessment. Within this article we discuss these technologies, as well as some of the results from their early use in clinical studies.