Patent ID: 7343036

Claim:
A computer-assisted 3D imaging method for a wireless, capsule-type endoscope unit equipped with a video camera, comprising: recording images of surroundings of the endoscope unit; transmitting image data of the recorded images, in a wireless fashion, from the endoscope unit to at least one of a reception device and evaluation device; executing a pattern recognition algorithm for identifying substantially corresponding features of successive individual images of a recorded image sequence; carrying out an image processing procedure for the concatenation of individual images by superimposing the identified, substantially corresponding image features in order thereby to produce a pseudo three-dimensional representation of the surroundings of the endoscope unit; calculating distance squares (d ij 2 :=d 2 ( x Mi , x Rj )) between the image parameters, stored in the form of N-dimensional feature vectors ( x Mi ), of recorded individual images with the image parameters, stored in the form of N-dimensional reference vectors ( x Rj ), of images of diseased tissue structures from a reference image database by calculating the square of the Euclidean length (∥Δ x ij ∥ 2 ) of their difference vectors (Δ x ij := x Mi x Rj ); and determining the reference vectors ( x Rj ) of the reference images whose distance squares (d ij 2 ) are a minimum in relation to the respective feature vectors ( x Mi ) of the individual images to be examined.