Abstract:
Objective To assess the diagnostic performance and inter-observer agreement of the Ovarian-Adnexal Reporting and Data System ultrasound (O-RADS) combined with contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS).
Methods Clinicopathological data of 123 adnexal lesions from 123 patients admitted to the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital and the Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University from July 2021 to December 2023 were collected. Each lesion was subject to CEUS before surgery. Each lesion was assigned to an O-RADS US category with histopathological results as the gold standard. The CEUS features of each lesion were recorded and used to calculate the total CEUS scores. Lesions were then re-rated according to O-RADS plus CEUS scores. Kappa (κ) statistics were applied to assess inter-observer agreement between a less experienced and an expert radiologist.
Results Of the 123 adnexal lesions, 94 were benign and 29 were malignant. The malignancy rates of O-RADS 5, O-RADS 4 and O-RADS 3 lesions were 81.25%, 20.83% and 2.86%, respectively. The malignancy rates of O-RADS+CEUS 5, O-RADS+CEUS 4, O-RADS+CEUS 3 and O-RADS+CEUS 2 lesions were 75%, 21.74%, 0% and 0%, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) of two observers were 0.791 (95% CI 0.891-0.976) and 0.934 (95% CI 0.697-0.886), respectively. The diagnostic performance of O-RADS plus CEUS was higher than that of O-RADS alone (
P = 0.0004). Taking ≥ O-RADS 4 as the cut-off value for malignant lesions, the sensitivity and specificity of O-RADS and O-RADS+CEUS were 0.966 (95% CI, 0.822-0.999) and 0.362 (95% CI 0.265-0.467), 1.000 (95% CI 0.881-1.000) and 0.723 (95% CI 0.622-0.811), respectively. The inter-observer agreement between a less experienced and an expert radiologist of O-RADS and CEUS features were good or very good (κ 0.668-0.840).
Conclusions Compared with O-RADS, O-RADS plus CEUS shows better diagnostic specificity for malignant adnexal lesions. The inter-observer agreement between a less experienced and an expert radiologist of O-RADS and CEUS features is good.