Cervical cytology: implementation and evaluation of a new automated interactive image analysis system

Objective To compare automated interactive screening using the ThinPrep Imaging System with independent manual primary screening of 12,000 routine ThinPrep slides. Study Design With the first 6,000 cases, the Review Scopes (RS) screening results from the 22 fields of view (FOV) only were compared to independent manual primary screening. In the next 6,000 cases, any abnormality detected in the 22 FOV resulted in full manual screening on the cytotechnologist\u92s own microscope. Sensitivity and specificity together with their 95% CIs were calculated for each method. Results In the first set of 6,000 cases, diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the imager were 85.19% and 96.67%, respectively. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of manual primary screening were 89.38% and 98.42%. This higher sensitivity and specificity of manual primary screening were found to be statistically significant. The second set of 6,000 cases demonstrated no significant statistical difference in sensitivity or specificity between the sets of data. Conclusion The results from our study show that the sensitivity and specificity of the imager technology are equivalent to those of manual primary screening. The system is ideally suited to the rapid screening of negative cases, allowing increased laboratory productivity and greater throughput of cases on a daily basis