[Echographic diagnosis of missed early miscarriage: Assessment of image quality]

Ultrasound examination plays a central role in case of suspected non-viable pregnancy. A wrong diagnosis might have major consequence in terms of inadequate care, especially in cases of false positive non-viable pregnancy diagnosis. Ultrasound criterions are today well defined. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility and reproducibility of a novel image-quoting method of first-trimester non-viable pregnancy.

Thirty images of non-viable pregnancy were twice evaluated with blinded proofreading. Two quotations were evaluated: the first for the images of gestational sacs without embryo (gestational sac score), the second for the images with embryo (embryo score).

The ICC (interclass correlation coefficient) was>0.75 for inter- and intra-observer reproducibility both for the quotations of the gestational sac and for the embryo with a low variability. Reproducibility of quoting crown rump length measurements <5mm was low at first proofreading but after adjustment of the quoting modalities, ICC was also>0.75.

The inter- and intra-observer reproducibility of our quoting methods is high with a low variability. They might be a useful tool in current practice in the future.