IP Library › Granted Patent US 12,488,459
Granted Patent B2
US 12,488,459 · App. 18/037,980 · Granted Dec 2, 2025

Automatic detection of colon lesions and blood in colon capsule endoscopy

Inventors: João Pedro Sousa Ferreira (Oporto, PT); Miguel José Da Quinta E Costa De Mascarenhas Saraiva (Oporto, PT); Hélder Manuel Casal Cardoso (Valbom Gondomar, PT); Manuel Guilherme Goncalves De Macedo (Oporto, PT); João Pedro Lima Afonso (Mazedo Moncao, PT); Ana Patricia Ribeiro Andrade (Oporto, PT); Renato Manue Natal Jorge (Oporto, PT); Marco Paulo Lages Parente (Oporto, PT)
Assignee: Digestaid—Artificial Intelligence Development, LDA
G06T7/0012G06N3/045G06N3/096G06V10/764G06V10/7715G06V10/776G06V10/945A61B1/041G06T2207/10068G06T2207/20081G06T2207/20084G06T2207/20092G06T2207/30028G06T2207/30096G06V2201/03
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,488,459
App. No.
18/037,980
Granted
Dec 2, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

The present invention relates to a computer-implemented method, capable of automatically detecting clinically relevant colonic pleomorphic lesions and blood or hematic traces in colon capsule endoscopy images, by classifying pixels as colonic pleomorphic lesions or blood or hematic traces, using a convolutional image feature extraction step followed by a classification and indexing step of such findings into a set of one or more classes.

Claims (29)

1 . A computer-implemented method capable of automatically detecting clinically relevant pleomorphic colonic lesions and blood or hematic residues in medical images, comprising:

detecting colonic lesions and blood or hematic residues in a medical images by classifying pixels as pleomorphic colonic lesions or blood or hematic residues using a convolutional image feature extraction step followed by a classification step and indexing such findings in a set of one of more classes wherein such method comprises:

the pre-training of a sample of said images in a plurality of combinations of said convolutional image feature extraction step followed by a classification component architecture using pre trained images as training data;

training of said images with the architecture combination that performs the best;

prediction of pleomorphic colonic lesions and blood traces using said optimized architecture combination;

including an output collector with means of communication to third-party validation capable of interpreting the accuracy of the previous steps of the method and correcting a wrong prediction;

storing the corrected prediction into the storage component.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the medical images are CCE images.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the pre-training runs iteratively in an optimization loop.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the classification network architecture comprises at least two blocks, each having, a Dense layer followed by a Dropout layer.

5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the last block of the classification component includes a BatchNormalization layer followed by a Dense layer with the depth size equal to the number of lesions type one wants to classify.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the set of pre-trained neural networks is the best performing of the following: VGG16, InceptionV3, Xception, EfficientNetB5, EfficientNetB7, Resnet50 or Resnet125.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the best-performing architecture is chosen based on the overall accuracy and f1-metrics.

8 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the training of the best-performing architecture comprises two to four dense layers in sequence, starting with 4096 and decreasing in half up to 512.

9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein between the final two layers of the best performing network there is a dropout layer of 0.1 drop rate.

10 . The method of claim 6 , wherein between the final two layers of the best performing network there is a dropout layer of 0.1 drop rate.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the training of images includes the division in one or more patient exclusive folds for optimized training.

12 . The method of claim 11 , wherein the training of the images includes a ratio of training-to-validation of 10%-90%.

13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the lesions are classified as colonic lesions or luminal blood traces.

14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the third-party validation is done by user-input.

15 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the training dataset includes images in the storage component that were predicted by sequentially performing the steps of such method.

16 . A portable endoscopic device comprising instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the computer to carry out the steps of the method of claim 1 .

17 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the last block of the classification component includes a BatchNormalization layer followed by a Dense layer with the depth size equal to the number of lesions type one wants to classify.

18 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the best-performing architecture is chosen based on the overall accuracy and f1-metrics.

19 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the training of the best-performing architecture comprises two to four dense layers in sequence, starting with 4096 and decreasing in half up to 512.

20 . The method of claim 1 , wherein between the final two layers of the best performing network there is a dropout layer of 0.1 drop rate.

21 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the training of the images includes a ratio of training-to-validation of 10%-90%.

22 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the lesions are classified as colonic lesions or luminal blood traces.

23 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the training dataset includes images in the storage component that were predicted by sequentially performing the steps of such method.

Assignments (1)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded May 19, 2023
From: SOUSA FERREIRA, JOÃO PEDRO; DA QUINTA E COSTA DE MASCARENHAS SARAIVA, MIGUEL JOSÉ; CASAL CARDOSO, HÉLDER MANUEL; GONÇALVES DE MACEDO, MANUEL GUILHERME; LIMA AFONSO, JOÃO PEDRO; RIBEIRO ANDRADE, ANA PATRICIA; NATAL JORGE, RENATO MANUEL; LAGES PARENTE, MARCO PAULO
To: DIGESTAID - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPMENT, LDA
Reel/Frame 063708/0813 →
Priority Claims (1)
PT 116895 · Nov 19, 2020 · national
Continuity (1)
Related Publication 20230410295A1 · Dec 21, 2023
References Cited (9)
US 5790761A · Heseltine · 1998 [cited by examiner]
US 12079993B1 · Lochner · 2024 [cited by examiner]
US 20040122702A1 · Sabol · 2004 [cited by examiner]
US 20060115827A1 · Lenz · 2006 [cited by examiner]
Patent Cooperation Treaty, Written Opinion and International Search Report issued in PCT/PT2021/050040, Mar. 14, 2022, pp. 1-16. [cited by applicant]
Valerio et al., “Lesions Multiclass Classification in Endoscopic Capsule Frames”, Procedia Computer Science, 2019, pp. 637-645, vol. 164. [cited by applicant]
Wang et al., “A systematic evaluation and optimization of automatic detection of ulcers in wireless capsule endoscopy on a large dataset using deep convolutional neural networks”, Physics in Medicine and Biology, Instit… [cited by applicant]
Yan et al., “″Intelligent diagnosis of gastric intestinal metaplasia based on convolutional neural network and limited humber of endoscopic images”, Computers in Biology and Medicine, Oct. 12, 2020, pp. 1-8, vol. 126. [cited by applicant]
Kyriakides et al., “An Introduction to Neural Architecture Search for Convolutional Networks”, ARXIV.ORG, University of Macedonia, May 22, 2020, pp. 1-17. [cited by applicant]