Study on the application and imaging characteristics of optical coherence tomography in vulva lesions.

In this study, a prospective study was conducted by using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in the in vivo detection of vulvar diseases. The clinical efficacy of the OCT we investigated in the detection of vulvar diseases, and the characteristics of the OCT images were defined. Overall, this study recruited 63 patients undergoing the colposcopy for vulvar lesions in three Chinese hospitals from December 20th, 2018 and September 24th, 2019. The colposcopy and the OCT examination were performed successively, and the OCT images were compared with the relevant tissue sections to characterize different lesions. The OCT diagnoses where categorized into 7 types, including normal and inflammatory vulva, condyloma acuminata, papilloma, lichen sclerosus, atrophic sclerosing lichen, fibrous epithelial polyp as well as cysts. The structural characteristics of the vulva tissue can be clearly observed in the OCT image, which are consistent with the characteristics of the tissue section. Compared with the pathological results, the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the OCT examination reached 83.82% (95% confidence interval, CI 72.5%-91.3%), 57.89% (95% CI 34.0%-78.9%) and 78.16%, respectively. The OCT is found with the advantages of being noninvasive, real-time and sensitive and with high resolution. It is of high significance to screening vulva diseases, and it is expected as one of the methods to clinically diagnose vulva diseases.

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.