Abstract
Endoscopic devices distort the image of a region under examination. The current inability of endoscopes to precisely measure the area of esophageal involvement by Barrett's metaplasia precludes an accurate assessment of the natural history of the disease. A method to accurately measure the extent of involvement has been derived. An endoscopic image was digitized and transformed into a flat image by digitally “unrolling” the region. In order to test this models of an esophagus were constructed and photographed endoscopicly. Comparisons were then made between the surface areas of the computer generated images and the model. Surface areas generated by the computer were linearly correlated with actual area (r>.96) and the difference in measured area varied between 0.5% and 8.5% (5.2±0.7%, mean±SEM).