Introduction Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have received enormous attention as a novel biomarker in various malignant diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate CTC detection using tapered-slit membrane filter based chipsets in differential diagnosis of ovarian tumors.

Methods A total of 230 preoperative women with an indeterminate ovarian tumor were prospectively enrolled. Seven patients diagnosed with other primary origin and 20 patients sampled after neoadjuvant chemotherapy were excluded from the analysis. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) of CTC detecting chipsets were analyzed according to postoperative pathologic results respectively.

Results 81 (39.9%) benign tumors, 32 (15.8%) borderline tumors, and 90 (44.3%) ovarian cancers were pathologically confirmed. CTC detecting chipsets had sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and AUC-ROC of 75.6%, 58.0%, 67.3%, and 0.655 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.570–0.740) for differentiating ovarian cancer from benign ovarian tumor. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and AUC-ROC for detecting ovarian cancer from borderline tumor were 75.6%, 50.0%, 68.9%, and 0.622 (0.505–0.739), respectively. In addition, sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and AUC-ROC were 68.9%, 58.0%, 64.5%, and 0.622 (0.540–0.703) for differentiating borderline and malignant ovarian tumor from benign tumor. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and AUC-ROC for detecting ovarian cancer from benign to borderline tumor were 75.6%, 55.8%, 64.5%, 0.645 (0.567–0.723), respectively.

Conclusion/Implications Our study suggests that preoperative high-throughput viable CTC isolation using tapered-slit membrane filter based chipsets could have a potential role in differentiating ovarian malignancy from benign and/or borderline tumors.