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Background and Study Aims: In videocapsule endoscopy examination (VCE), subtle variations in mucosal hue or pattern such as those seen in ulcerations can be difficult to detect, depending on the experience of the reader. Our aim was to test whether virtual chromoendoscopy (VC) techniques, designed to enhance the contrast between the lesion and the normal mucosa, could improve the characterization of ulcerative mucosal lesions., Patients and Methods: Fifteen trainees or young gastroenterologists with no experience in VCE were randomly assigned to evaluate 250 true ulcerative and 100 false ulcerative, difficult-to-interpret small bowel lesions, initially as white light images (WLI) and then, in a second round, with the addition of one VC setting or again as WLI, labeling them as real lesions or artifacts., Results: On the overall image evaluation, an improvement in lesion characterization was observed by adding any chromoendoscopy setting, especially Blue mode and FICE 1, with increases in accuracy of 13 % [95 %CI 0.8, 25.3] and 7.1 % [95 %CI - 17.0, 31.3], respectively. However, when only false ulcerative images were considered, with the same presets (Blue mode and FICE 1), there was a loss in accuracy of 10.7 % [95 %CI - 10.9, 32.3] and 7.3 % [95 %CI - 1.3, 16.0], respectively. The interobserver agreement was poor for both readings., Conclusions: VC helps beginner VCE readers correctly categorize difficult-to-interpret small bowel mucosal ulcerative lesions. However, false lesions tend to be misinterpreted as true ulcerative with the same presets. Therefore care is advised in using VC especially under poor bowel preparation.

Background: The identification of subtle small-bowel mucosal lesions by video capsule endoscopy (VCE) can be challenging. Virtual chromoendoscopy techniques, based on narrowing the bandwidth of conventional white light endoscopic imaging (WLI), were developed to improve the analysis of mucosal patterns. However, data on the already-implemented Flexible spectral Imaging (or Fujinon Intelligent) Color Enhancement (FICE) software application in VCE are limited., Materials and Methods: An evaluation of 250 difficult-to-interpret small-bowel ulcerative and 50 artifact lesions selected from 64 VCE recordings was conducted by four experienced VCE readers in two steps: initially as WLI, then with the addition of all available virtual chromoendoscopy pre-sets (FICE 1, 2, and 3 and Blue mode). The readers labeled them as real or false ulcerative lesions and rated the usefulness of each of the pre-sets., Results: Between the first (WLI-only) and second (virtual chromoendoscopy-aided) readings, in terms of accuracy there was a global 16.5 % (95 % confidence interval [95 %CI] 13.6 - 19.4 %) improvement (P < 0.001), derived from a 22 % [95 %CI 18.9 - 25.1 %] improvement in the evaluation of true ulcerative images (P < 0.001) and an 11 % (95 %CI 4.1 - 17.7 %) decrease in the evaluation of false ulcerative ones (P = 0.003). The FICE 1 and 2 pre-sets were rated as most useful., Conclusion: The application of virtual chromoendoscopy for VCE is useful to better categorize difficult-to-interpret small-bowel mucosal ulcerative lesions. However, care must be taken, and individual images should be evaluated only as part of a sequence in a recording because the technology can also mistakenly guide to the incorrect interpretation of artifacts as ulcerative lesions.