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The standard-of-care diagnostic prenatal testing includes a combination of cytogenetic methods, such as karyotyping, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and chromosomal microarray (CMA), using either direct or cultured amniocytes or chorionic villi sampling. However, each technology has its limitations: karyotyping has a low resolution (>5 Mb), FISH is targeted, and CMA does not detect balanced structural variations (SVs). These limitations necessitate the use of multiple tests, either simultaneously or sequentially, to reach a genetic diagnosis. Optical genome mapping (OGM) is an emerging technology that can detect several classes of SVs in a single assay, but it has not been evaluated in the prenatal setting. This validation study analyzed 114 samples that were received in our laboratory for traditional cytogenetic analysis with karyotyping, FISH, and/or CMA. OGM was 100% concordant in identifying the 101 aberrations that included 29 interstitial/terminal deletions, 28 duplications, 26 aneuploidies, 6 absence of heterozygosity regions, 3 triploid genomes, 4 isochromosomes, and 1 translocation; and the method revealed the identity of 3 marker chromosomes and 1 chromosome with additional material not determined by karyotyping. In addition, OGM detected 64 additional clinically reportable SVs in 43 samples. OGM has a standardized laboratory workflow and reporting solution that can be adopted in routine clinical laboratories and demonstrates the potential to replace the current standard-of-care methods for prenatal diagnostic testing.
Sahajpal et al. (Wed,) studied this question.