Meeting Banner
Abstract #1211

Textural Analysis of Echo-Planar Diffusion-Weighted Imaging Improves Preoperative Characterisation of Suspected Thyroid Tumours

Anna M. Brown1, 2, Sidhartha Nagala3, Daniel Scoffings4, Mary McLean2, Andrew N. Priest4, Piyush Jani3, John Griffiths2

1School of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States; 2Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom; 3Department of Otolaryngology, Addenbrookes Hospital, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom; 4Department of Radiology, Addenbrooke's Hospital, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom


Ultrasound-guided needle biopsy fails to diagnose up to 20% of malignant thyroid nodules. Texture analysis and linear discriminant analysis of apparent diffusion coefficient maps offers a novel approach to non-invasively distinguish between benign and malignant thyroid nodules. We achieved high sensitivity (87%) and specificity (100%) on a training set, with 83/87 slices and 18/20 nodules correctly classified. Additionally, 11/14 slices and 5/6 nodules were correctly characterised in a test set. This study indicates great potential to better characterise indeterminate thyroid nodules, and a large prospective study is now needed to fully prove this model.