Indirect comparison of the diagnostic performance of 18F-FDG PET/CT and MRI in differentiating benign and malignant ovarian or adnexal tumors: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Table 3 The results of meta-regression analysis of PET/CT and MRI to diferenciate benign and malignant ovarian tumors

Covariates	Subgroup	No. of studies	Sensitivity(95%CI)	Specitivity(95%CI)	P
¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT
Study design	Prospective	7	0.95 [0.91–0.99]	0.86 [0.77–0.94]	<0.01
Study design	Retrospective	3	0.94 [0.85–1.00]	0.89 [0.81–0.98]
CT technique	Without enhanced CT	5	0.96 [0.92–1.00]	0.81 [0.73–0.90]	0.21
CT technique	With enhanced CT	6	0.91 [0.83–0.99]	0.91 [0.85–0.96]
Sample size	>50	7	0.94 [0.89–0.99]	0.87 [0.80–0.94]	0.93
Sample size	≤50	4	0.94 [0.86–1.00]	0.84 [0.71–0.97]
Mean age	≥60	4	0.97 [0.93–1.00]	0.89 [0.82–0.96]	<0.01
Mean age	<60	6	0.93 [0.87–0.99]	0.80 [0.73–0.87]
MRI^a
Study design	Prospective	9	0.95 [0.93–0.97]	0.86 [0.80–0.93]	<0.01
Study design	Retrospective	8	0.88 [0.85–0.92]	0.83 [0.75–0.91]
Magnetic field strength	With 1.5 T	12	0.91 [0.88–0.94]	0.86 [0.81–0.92]	0.22
Magnetic field strength	Only 3.0 T	5	0.95 [0.91–0.98]	0.80 [0.68–0.92]
Scan sequence	With DWI	11	0.91 [0.88–0.95]	0.87 [0.82–0.93]	0.16
Scan sequence	Without DWI	6	0.94 [0.91–0.98]	0.78 [0.67–0.90]
Sample size	>50	12	0.93 [0.91–0.96]	0.85 [0.79–0.91]	0.09
Sample size	≤50	5	0.85 [0.76–0.94]	0.83 [0.72–0.95]
No. of imaging planes	3	7	0.92 [0.92–0.92]	0.83 [0.83–0.83]	1.00
No. of imaging planes	2	9	0.93 [0.93–0.93]	0.85 [0.85–0.85]

¹⁸F-FDG Fluorine-18 labeled deoxyglucose, PET Positron emission computer, CT Computed tomography, MRI Magnetic resonance imaging, DWI Diffusion weighted imaging, CI Confidence interval; ^aAs for MRI, the mean age of all patients with ovarian tumors enrolled in the study was less than 60 years old, so they were not included in the subgroup analysis

ISSN: 1471-2407