Abstract: Abstract Purpose: Methodology evaluation for decision support systems for health is a time consuming-task. To assess performance of polyp detection
methods in colonoscopy videos, clinicians have to deal with the annotation
of thousands of images. Current existing tools could be improved in terms of
exibility and ease of use. Methods:We introduce GTCreator, a exible annotation tool for providing image and text annotations to image-based datasets.
It keeps the main basic functionalities of other similar tools while extending
other capabilities such as allowing multiple annotators to work simultaneously
on the same task or enhanced dataset browsing and easy annotation transfer aiming to speed up annotation processes in large datasets. Results: The
comparison with other similar tools shows that GTCreator allows to obtain
fast and precise annotation of image datasets, being the only one which offers
full annotation editing and browsing capabilites. Conclusions: Our proposed
annotation tool has been proven to be efficient for large image dataset annota-
tion, as well as showing potential of use in other stages of method evaluation
such as experimental setup or results analysis.

Abstract: A novel specular highlights detection method in colonoscopy videos is presented. The method is based on a model of appearance dening specular
highlights as bright spots which are highly contrasted with respect to adjacent regions. Our approach proposes two stages; segmentation, and then classication
of bright spot regions. The former denes a set of candidate regions obtained through a region growing process with local maxima as initial region seeds. This process creates a tree structure which keeps track, at each growing iteration, of the region frontier contrast; nal regions provided depend on restrictions over contrast value. Non-specular regions are ltered through a classication stage performed by a linear SVM classier using model-based features from each region. We introduce a new validation database with more than 25; 000 regions along with their corresponding pixel-wise annotations. We perform a comparative study against other approaches. Results show that our method is superior to other approaches, with our segmented regions being
closer to actual specular regions in the image. Finally, we also present how our methodology can also be used to obtain an accurate prediction of polyp histology.

Abstract: We introduce in this paper a novel polyp localization method for colonoscopy videos. Our method is based on a model of appearance for polyps which defines polyp boundaries in terms of valley information. We propose the integration of valley information in a robust way fostering complete, concave and continuous boundaries typically associated to polyps. This integration is done by using a window of radial sectors which accumulate valley information to create WMDOVA1 energy maps related with the likelihood of polyp presence. We perform a double validation of our maps, which include the introduction of two new databases, including the first, up to our knowledge, fully annotated database with clinical metadata associated. First we assess that the highest value corresponds with the location of the polyp in the image. Second, we show that WM-DOVA energy maps can be comparable with saliency maps obtained from physicians' fixations obtained via an eye-tracker. Finally, we prove that our method outperforms state-of-the-art computational saliency results. Our method shows good performance, particularly for small polyps which are reported to be the main sources of polyp miss-rate, which indicates the potential applicability of our method in clinical practice.