INTRODUCTIONOvarian cancers ranks fifth in cancer death worldwide and in India it ranks third among the female genital tract malignancies.1 In India, the annual percentage of increase in age standardised incidence rates ranged from 0.7% to 2.4 %.2,3 Of all gynaecological cancers, ovarian malignancies represent the greatest clinical challenge, because of greater range and variety of tumors with uncertain origin, no known premalignant lesion and variability in the rate of disease progression. Around 70% of patients with ovarian tumors are diagnosed only at advanced stages due to unavailability of effective screening method and lack of specific clinical presentations at early stage of the disease where the prognosis is poor. In contrast, women with early stage ovarian cancer have an excellent survival rates. 4 Hence, there has been an increased interest in the development of investigations that can detect ovarian cancer at an early stage. Moreover, pre-operative knowledge about the nature of the ovarian tumour is necessary to plan surgery. A malignant tumour requires radical surgery, chemotherapy and counselling regarding the survival rates in contrast to the benign tumors that can be managed with simple laparoscopic cystectomy or laparotomy. This signifies the need for a preoperative ABSTRACT Background: Ovarian cancers ranks fifth in cancer death worldwide and in India it ranks third among the female genital tract malignancies. Objective of present study was to assess prospectively the efficacy of morphological indexing (MI) as a method to predict malignancy in sonographically confirmed ovarian tumors. Methods: A prospective study conducted in a tertiary care hospital in Tamil Nadu from September 2011 to August 2012. The risk of malignancy is preoperatively assessed in 136 patients with ovarian tumour using a morphological index based on tumour volume and wall structure. Each tumour was assigned a score of 0 to 10 based on increasing volume and morphologic complexity. The efficacy of the index was assessed by histopathological examination of the tumour. Results: The benign tumours had a mean MI score of 4.3 and malignant tumours had a mean of 8.3 which was statistically significant. Of the 54 tumours with MI <5, only 2 (3.7%) were malignant where else out of the remaining 82 tumours with MI >5, 54 (51.2%) were malignant. With MI >5 as a predictor of malignancy the present study had a Sensitivity-95.5%, Specificity-56.5%, Positive predictive value-51.2%, Negative predictive value-94%, and Accuracy-68%. Conclusions: Morphological index is a simple, valuable and inexpensive diagnostic tool to rule out malignancy in pre operative evaluations of ovarian tumors.