A prospective study of optical coherence tomography for predicting invasion depth of early esophageal cancer

Objective To evaluate optical coherence tomography(OCT)for predicting invasion depth of early esophageal cancer(EEC) and to compare OCT and magnifying endoscopy-narrow band imaging (ME-NBI)in clinical performance. Methods Twenty-eight patients who were diagnosed with EEC and accepted OCT and ME-NBI before endoscopic submucosal dissection(ESD)were enrolled in this prospective study. On the basis of OCT and ME-NBI images, real-time prediction of EEC invasion depth was conducted. Postoperative pathological results were taken as golden standard to compare the accuracy of OCT and ME-NBI in evaluation of EEC invasion depth. The procedure time and incidence of complications during evaluation process were also analyzed. Results The overall accuracy of OCT and ME-NBI in predicting invasion depth of 28 EEC patients were 67.9% (19/28) and 75.0% (21/28) respectively, with no significant difference(P>0.05). The accuracy of OCT and ME-NBI in distinguishing lesions located in epithelium/lamina propria mucosa (EP/LPM) lesions were 78.9%(15/19) and 68.4% (13/19), with no significant difference(P>0.05). The procedure time of OCT was significantly shorter than that of ME-NBI (6.0±2.9 min VS 16.3±5.4 min, P<0.001). Conclusion The ability of OCT to predict invasion depth of EEC and distinguish lesions located in the EP/LPM is comparable with that of ME-NBI. Besides, OCT requires shorter procedure time for evaluation. Key words: Tomography, optical coherence; Esophageal neoplasm; Invasion depth; Magnifying endoscopy with narrow band imaging; Accuracy