Application of a Novel Miniaturized Histopathologic Microscope for Ex Vivo Identifying Cerebral Glioma Margins Rapidly During Surgery: A Parallel Control Study

Purpose: The purpose of our study is to assess the clinical performance of the DiveScope, a novel handheld histopathologic microscope in rapidly differentiating glioma from normal brain tissue during neurosurgery. Methods: Thirty-two ex vivo specimens from 18 patients were included in the present study. The excised suspicious tissue was sequentially stained with sodium fluorescein and methylene blue and scanned with DiveScope during surgery. The adjacent tissue was sent to the department of pathology for frozen section examination. They would eventually be sent to the pathology department later for hematoxylin and eosin staining for final confirmation. The positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve of the device were calculated. In addition, the difference in time usage between DiveScope and frozen sections was compared for the initial judgment. Results: The sensitivity and specificity of the DiveScope after analyzing hematoxylin and eosin -staining sections, were 88.29% and 100%, respectively. In contrast, the sensitivity and specificity of the frozen sections histopathology were 100% and 75%, respectively. The area under the curve of the DiveScope and the frozen sections histopathology was not significant ( P =0.578). Concerning time usage, DiveScope is significantly much faster than the frozen sections histopathology no matter the size of tissue. Conclusion: Compared with traditional pathological frozen sections, DiveScope was faster and displayed an equal accuracy for judging tumor margins intraoperatively.