Like all techniques that strive to bridge the gap between laboratory science and clinical medicine, electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy builds on established applications in biochemistry and chemistry, following on from its discovery by Professor EK Zavoisky and colleagues in 1944 at Kazan State University, situated deep within the Tatarstan Republic of the Russian Federation, formerly the Soviet Union.¹ However, it is only now that developments in technology may perhaps allow the endoscopist of the future to acquire information on gut mucosal integrity in vivo during a procedure. This is an intriguing prospect, although there are a number of practical problems to be solved before the in vivo clinical potential of this sensitive and specific technology is realised. The average endoscopist, faced with the clinical burden of disease and an ever growing case load, requires an emerging clinical technique to robustly deliver reproducible clinically relevant data without obfuscation by artefact. The questions therefore arise of how feasible will it be for ESR spectroscopy to be implemented in the clinical arena and what additional information can be given to the average busy gastroenterologist?

To delve into the basic physics of the technique for a moment, ESR, also known as electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, describes the resonant absorption of microwave radiation by …