Through the recently started nationwide bowel cancer screening programme in the Netherlands, an extra 70.000 colonoscopies are annually performed. In current practice, all resected colonic lesions are histopathologically analysed. Even diminutive polyps, which rarely harbour cancer or advanced histological features. If endoscopists are able to accurately differentiate between neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions during colonoscopy, practice could become more efficient and costeffective. This strategy is called optical diagnosis and two clinical practice strategies have been proposed by the American Society of Gastroenterologists (ASGE). First, diminutive polyps could be resected and discarded if >90% of the surveillance intervals predicted on optical diagnosis correlate with the surveillance intervals after histopathological validation (if assessed with high confidence). Second, hyperplastic polyps in the rectosigmoid could be left in situ if endoscopists are able to confidently predict neoplastic histology of diminutive colorectal polyps with a negative predictive value (NPV) of ≥90%.