Magnifying endoscopy with narrow band imaging for early differentiated gastric adenocarcinoma

We have been using magnifying endoscopy with narrow band imaging (NBI) to study early differentiated gastric adenocarcinomas and to assess the relationship between microvessel pattern, pit pattern and histological pattern. The magnified view of the cancerous area showed three types of pattern: (i) a mesh pattern, consisting of mesh-like connected microvessels; (ii) a loop pattern, consisting of loop-like microvessels that were not connected and had tubule-like or villus-like mucosal structures along them; and (iii) an interrupted pattern, consisting of interrupted thick or thin vessels without mucosal structures. The mesh type of microvascular pattern showed a round pit pattern in 88.9% of cases (32/36) and the loop type of microvascular pattern showed a non-round pit pattern in 100% of cases. Among lesions that showed a mesh pattern or a loop pattern, 94.9% (56/59) were mucosal cancer and 5.1% (3/59) were submucosal cancer. However, 92.3% (12/13) of lesions that showed an interrupted pattern were submucosal differentiated adenocarcinoma and 7.7% (1/13) were mucosal differentiated adenocarcinoma. The present findings provide basic data on the characteristics of mucosal differentiated gastric adenocarcinoma revealed by magnifying endoscopy with NBI, as well as invasive changes such as submucosal invasion.