A New Special Section in Endoscopy: Picture Gallery

We are proud to introduce a new series directed at teaching us how to recognize early cancers and what methods to apply to characterize them further. Greatly influenced by the focus on imaging by our Japanese colleagues, endoscopists in the West are also shifting their main interest from detecting gross polypoid or ulcerous lesions to the recognition of flat and slightly elevated or depressed lesions, which may be smaller or larger. A variety of more sophisticated techniques to detect and characterize these lesions has been developed and welcomed enthusiastically all over the world. Furthermore, there is hope that endoscope manufacturers produce better instruments with better resolution and associated functions in order to highlight these early and subtle lesions. Nevertheless, continuous training of our eyes and cognitive abilities is necessary to increase our yield with current instruments.

This is the first of a series of early cancer, throughout the GI tract, which will be continued with other organs and also with other examples from the same areas in our journal. We greatly appreciate the enormous support by the Japanese Editorial Office to bring this series to the forefront and we hope that our picture gallery of early cancers will have a continuous learning effect on Endoscopy readers.

Thomas Rösch, MDAssociate Editor