Rapid discrimination of malignant lesions from normal gastric tissues utilizing Raman spectroscopy system: a...

To systematically analyze the diagnostic accuracy of Raman spectroscopy system (RAS) in the rapid diagnosis of gastric cancer with histopathology as the reference standard.

We searched a wide range of electronic databases for all published researches that assessed the diagnostic accuracy of RAS to detect gastric carcinoma. Full papers were obtained for potentially eligible studies and evaluated according to predefined criteria. The Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies checklist was used to assess the quality of included studies. From each study, we extracted information on diagnostic performance of RAS. After exploring heterogeneity, we adopted a random effects model to pool related effect sizes.

The initial literature search identified 257 reference articles in which 15 relevant articles with 15 data sets were selected and reviewed. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of RAS in diagnosing gastric cancer were 0.89 (95 % CI 0.84-0.92) and 0.92 (95 % CI 0.88-0.95), respectively. The positive likelihood ratio, the negative likelihood ratio, and the area under the curve were 10 (95 % CI 6.5-15.3), 0.13 (95 % CI 0.08-0.22), and 0.96 (95 % CI 0.94-0.97), respectively. All the pooled estimates, calculated by random and fixed effect models, were similar. There was no evidence of considerable publication bias.

RAS is an objective and sensitive optical diagnostic technology for detecting gastric cancer and has advantages of being noninvasive to the body, real-time diagnosis, and ease of use. Consequently, it does deserve to be recommended.