Artificial intelligence-aided optical biopsy improves the diagnosis of esophageal squamous neoplasm

Table 1 Baseline characteristics of patients and lesions, n (%)

Baseline characteristics	n
Patients	54
Male	39 (72.2)
Female	15 (27.8)
Age, mean (range), years	59.3 (38-77)
Lesions	67
Lesion size, mean, cm	1.26
Location
Upper esophagus	5
Middle esophagus	35
Lower esophagus	27
Macroscopic type
I	3
0-IIa	3
0-IIb	58
0-IIa + IIc	3
Histological diagnosis
Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma	8
HGIN	9
LGIN	8
Inflammatory/hyperplastic lesions	42

HGIN: High-grade intraepithelial neoplasia; LGIN: Low-grade intraepithelial neoplasia.

Table 2 Diagnostic performance for probe-based confocal laser endomicroscopy videos

Parameter	iCLE, % (95%CI)	Expert, % (95%CI)	NE, % (95%CI)	NE with iCLE, % (95%CI)	P value	Expert vs NE	iCLE vs NE	iCLE vs expert	NE with iCLE vs NE	NE with iCLE vs expert
Accuracy	90.9 (88.5-93.3)	88.2 (85.6-90.9)	83.6 (80.5-86.7)	88.6 (86.0-91.2)		0.026a	< 0.001a	0.143	0.016a	0.863
Sensitivity	92.0 (88.4-95.6)	80.4 (75.2-85.7)	76.0 (70.4-81.6)	89.8 (85.8-93.8)		0.254	< 0.001a	< 0.001a	< 0.001a	0.005a
Specificity	90.2 (87.0-93.4)	93.5 (90.8-96.1)	88.7 (85.3-92.1)	87.8 (84.3-91.3)		0.031a	0.532	0.121	0.718	0.012a
PPV	86.3 (81.9-90.6)	89.2 (84.8-93.5)	81.8 (76.5-87.1)	83.1 (78.4-87.9)		0.035a	0.199	0.354	0.718	0.068
NPV	94.4 (91.9-96.9)	87.7 (84.3-91.1)	84.7 (80.9-88.4)	92.8 (89.9-95.6)		0.238	< 0.001a	0.003a	0.001a	0.028a

^aP < 0.05.

NE: Nonexpert; iCLE: Intelligent confocal laser endomicroscopy; CI: Confidence interval; PPV: Positive predictive value; NPV: Negative predictive value.