J Cancer 2021; 12(3):754-764. doi:10.7150/jca.52797 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. Department of MRI, the First People' s Hospital of Yunnan Province, the Affiliated Hospital of Kunming University of Science and Technology, No. 157 Jinbi Road, Kunming 650032, Yunnan, China.
2. Center of Infectious Diseases, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, No. 37 Guoxue Lane, Wuhou District, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan, China.
#Co-first authors with equal contributions to this work.
Objectives: To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the preoperative assessment of cervical invasion and to analyse the influence of different imaging protocols in patients with endometrial carcinoma.
Methods: An extensive search of articles about MRI for assessing cervical invasion in patients with endometrial carcinoma was performed on PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Clinical Trials from January 2000 to July 2020. Two reviewers independently evaluated the methodological quality of each study by using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2). Diagnostic accuracy results and additional useful information were extracted. The pooled estimation data was obtained by statistical analysis.
Results: A total of 42 eligible studies were included in the meta-analysis. Significant evidence of heterogeneity was found for detecting cervical invasion (I2 = 74.1%, P = 0.00 for sensitivity and I2 = 56.2%, P = 0.00 for specificity). The pooled sensitivity and specificity of MRI were 0.58 and 0.95 respectively. The use of higher field strength (3.0 T) demonstrated higher pooled sensitivity (0.74). Using diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) alone presented higher pooled sensitivity (0.86) than using other sequences. The studies that used dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) alone showed higher sensitivity (0.80) and specificity (0.96) than those that used T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) alone.
Conclusions: MRI shows high specificity for detecting cervical infiltration in endometrial carcinoma. Using DWI or a 3.0-T device may improve the pooled sensitivity. DCE-MRI demonstrates higher pooled sensitivity and specificity than T2WI.
Keywords: endometrial carcinoma, magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion weighted imaging, cervical invasion, meta-analysis