Multi-center clinical study using optical coherence tomography for evaluation of cervical lesions in-vivo

In this prospective study of an in-vivo cervical examination using optical coherence tomography (OCT), we evaluated the diagnostic value of non-invasive and real-time OCT in cervical precancerous lesions and cancer diagnosis, and determined the characteristics of OCT images. 733 patients from 5 Chinese hospitals were inspected with OCT and colposcopy-directed biopsy. The OCT images were compared with the histological sections to find out the characteristics of various categories of lesions. The OCT images were also interpreted by 3 investigators to make a 2-class classification, and the results were compared against the pathological results. Various structures of the cervical tissue were clearly observed in OCT images, which matched well with the corresponding histological sections. The OCT diagnosis results delivered a sensitivity of 87.0% (95% confidence interval, CI 82.2-90.7%), a specificity of 84.1% (95% CI 80.3-87.2%), and an overall accuracy of 85.1%. Both good consistency of OCT images and histological images and satisfactory diagnosis results were provided by OCT. Due to its features of non-invasion, real-time, and accuracy, OCT is valuable for the in-vivo evaluation of cervical lesions and has the potential to be one of the routine cervical diagnosis methods.