Endoscopic optic coherent tomography in diagnosis of early bladder cancer

Abstract

Our goal was statistical assessment of the in vivo cystoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) ability to detect early neoplasia in human urinary bladder. We analyzed major reasons of false positive and false negative image recognition results. Optical coherence tomography was performed to image the bladder during cystoscopy. The study enrolled 114 zones with suspicion for bladder cancer. The diagnosis was established by histopathology examination of a biopsied tissue. Each biopsy site was examined by OCT. Two physicians blinded to all clinical data participated in the recognition (malignant, suspicion or benign) of the OCT images. 82% sensitivity and 85% specificity for the OCT recognition of dysplastic/malignant versus benign/reactive conditions of the bladder were demonstrated. The interobserver agreement multi-rater kappa coefficient is 0.56. Good sensitivity and specificity of the OCT method in the diagnostics of bladder neoplasia makes OCT a promising complementary cystoscopic technique for non-invasive evaluation of zones suspicious for early cancer.