The value of different imaging methods in the diagnosis of breast cancer: A protocol for network meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy

BACKGROUND: : Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women all over the world and the second most common cause of cancer-related mortality. Imaging examination plays an important role in the diagnosis of early breast cancer. Due to different imaging principles and methods, all kinds of examinations have their advantages and disadvantages. It is particularly important for clinicians to choose these examination methods reasonably to achieve the best diagnostic effect. The objectives of this systematic review and NMA are to determine the diagnostic accuracy of imaging technologies for breast cancer and to compare the diagnostic accuracy of different index tests and to support guidelines development and clinical practice. METHODS: : PubMed, Embase.com, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, and SinoMed will be searched to identify relevant studies up to August 31, 2021. We will include random controlled trials, cross-sectional studies, case-control studies, and cohort studies that evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of different imaging diagnostic methods for breast cancer. The Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 quality assessment tool will be used to assess the risk of bias in each study. Standard pairwise meta-analysis and NMA will be performed using STATA V.12.0, MetaDiSc 1.40, and R 3.4.1 software to compare the diagnostic efficacy of different imaging diagnostic methods. Subgroup analyses and sensitivity analyses will be conducted to investigate the sources of heterogeneity. RESULTS: : The results of this study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. CONCLUSION: : This study will comprehensively evaluate the accuracy of different imaging diagnostic methods in the diagnosis of breast cancer. The results of this study will provide high-quality evidence to support clinical practice and guidelines development.