Transvaginal Doppler ultrasound with color flow imaging in the diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

Transvaginal Doppler ultrasound with color flow imaging is a new technique for the evaluation of gynecologic diseases. This method was used for the diagnosis of ovarian tumors in 24 women treated in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nagoya University Hospital, Japan. Waveforms of the parenchymal tumor arteries or tumor surface arteries were compared using values of the pulsatility index (PI). The value for 1/PI was 0.69 +/- 0.05 in benign tumors and 1.87 +/- 0.65 in malignant tumors (P less than .01). When the cutoff value of 1/PI was set at 0.8 (cutoff value of PI was 1.25), the accuracy of diagnosis was 95.8% (23 of 24). Among 11 tumors with low CA 125 (less than 35 U/mL), all five malignant tumors had high 1/PI (above 0.8), and all benign tumors had low 1/PI (less than 0.8) or nondetectable waveforms. Based on the findings of this study, color flow Doppler proved to be useful for diagnosis of ovarian cancer.