  Objective: Surgical data science is evolving into a research field that aims
to observe everything occurring within and around the treatment process to
provide situation-aware data-driven assistance. In the context of endoscopic
video analysis, the accurate classification of organs in the field of view of
the camera proffers a technical challenge. Herein, we propose a new approach to
anatomical structure classification and image tagging that features an
intrinsic measure of confidence to estimate its own performance with high
reliability and which can be applied to both RGB and multispectral imaging (MI)
data. Methods: Organ recognition is performed using a superpixel classification
strategy based on textural and reflectance information. Classification
confidence is estimated by analyzing the dispersion of class probabilities.
Assessment of the proposed technology is performed through a comprehensive in
vivo study with seven pigs. Results: When applied to image tagging, mean
accuracy in our experiments increased from 65% (RGB) and 80% (MI) to 90% (RGB)
and 96% (MI) with the confidence measure. Conclusion: Results showed that the
confidence measure had a significant influence on the classification accuracy,
and MI data are better suited for anatomical structure labeling than RGB data.
Significance: This work significantly enhances the state of art in automatic
labeling of endoscopic videos by introducing the use of the confidence metric,
and by being the first study to use MI data for in vivo laparoscopic tissue
classification. The data of our experiments will be released as the first in
vivo MI dataset upon publication of this paper.
