Cancer diagnosis via fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy system: A meta-analysis study

Background: Reflectance spectroscopy, which is one of spectroscopic techniques, is an optical technique and has the potential to differentiate cancerous tissues from normal tissues. There are several studies which evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of this method in the literature. Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the sensitivity and specificity of the fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy system in diagnosis of cancerous tissue via meta-analysis. Materials and methods: In this meta-analysis paper, the literature search was conducted using the "PubMed" database as of 16-August-2018 last date. A total of 30 articles which the pathological evaluation was accepted as the gold standard were included in the meta-analysis, excluding the articles that were out of context and did not contain the required statistics. Results: Overall sensitivity was 0.82; overall specificity was 0.84 and area under the summary receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.89 in differentiating cancerous from normal tissue by using fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy system. Overall diagnostic odds ratio was obtained as 29.42. Conclusion: In this study, according to the results of metaanalysis conducted to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy high overall sensitivity and specificity values were obtained in the detection of cancerous tissue. © 2019 De Gruyter. All rights reserved.