Optical coherence tomography in diagnostics of precancer and cancer of human bladder

Our goal was statistical assessment of the in vivo cystoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) ability to detect 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 63 patients with suspicion for bladder cancer and scheduled for cystoscopy. The diagnosis was established by histopathology examination of a biopsy. Each biopsy site was examined by OCT. Benign conditions were diagnosed for 31 patients, and dysplasia or carcinoma were diagnosed for 32 patients. Six physicians blinded to all clinical data participated in the dichotomy recognition (malignant or benign) of the OCT images. 98% sensitivity and 72% specificity for the OCT recognition of dysplastic/malignant versus benign/reactive conditions of the bladder are demonstrated. Total error rate was 14.8%. The interobserver agreement multi-rater kappa coefficient is 0.80. The superficial and invasive bladder cancer and high-grade dysplasia were recognized with minimum error rate ranging from 0 to 3.3%. High sensitivity and good 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 high-grade dysplasia and cancer.