TY - JOUR T1 - Value of autofluorescence imaging videobronchoscopy (AFI) in detecting lung cancers and precancerous lesions: a review. JF - Respiratory Care DO - 10.4187/respcare.02524 SP - respcare.02524 AU - Qing He AU - Qing Wang AU - Qi Wu AU - Jing Feng AU - Jie Cao AU - Bao-yuan Chen Y1 - 2013/06/12 UR - http://rc.rcjournal.com/content/early/2013/06/13/respcare.02524.abstract N2 - Bronchoscopy technology is a desirable module for detecting lung cancers arising from central airways. Considerable early cancers and precancerous lesions are not visible on the conventional bronchoscopy - white light bronchoscopy (WLB). Autofluorescence bronchoscopy (AFB) is a newly developed technology which exploits the difference of autofluorescent intensity between normal and tumorous tissues to localize areas of cancers and precancerous lesions in the tracheobronchial tree. Several types of medical AFB systems have been used in clinical practice and autofluorescence imaging videobronchoscopy (AFI) is one of these AFBs. In most related studies about AFB except of AFI, AFBs can provide a much higher sensitivity but lower specificity compared with WLB. Regarding AFI, recent studies have reported controversial results in the sensitivity and specificity for detecting cancers and precancerous lesions compared with WLB. In this review, working mechanisms and characteristics of AFBs (mainly about AFI, a special type of AFBs) are recapitulated and the diagnostic performance of AFI compared with WLB, other AFBs and narrow-band imaging (NBI) for detecting lung cancers and precancerous lesions is summarized. ER -