Benefits of the ThinPrep® Integrated Imager for cervical cytology

Objective : We compared the performance of a computerized ThinPrep® (TP) Integrated Imager (I2) with the manual reading of paired TP slides stained with an ordinary Papanicolaou stain (TPM).Study Design : The study consisted of 552 cases, and compared the results of I2-screened TP (TPI) with TPM. This study also compared high risk human papillomavirus (HPV) positive rates in cases of atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC-US) diagnosed using TPI with those diagnosed using TPM.Results : Concordance in cytologic diagnoses between TPI and TPM was 88.4%. Concordance between cytologic and histologic diagnoses for TPM was 86.2%, and that for TPI was 93.1%. The detection rate of a low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion with TPM was 95.0% and that for TPI was 97.5%. The detection rate of high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSIL) and high-grade disease with TPM was 60.0%, and that of TPI was 86.7%. These results suggest TPI is more accurate than TPM for diagnoses of HSIL and high-grade disease. The high-risk HPV positive rate in ASC-US cases of TPM was 58.3%, and that for TPI was 66.7%.Conclusion : The I2 is useful in cervical screening and may contribute to improved accuracy in cytologic diagnoses.