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.
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