ROLE OF DIFFUSION-WEIGHTED MR IMAGING OF THYROID NODULES

Abstract

Background: Thyroid nodules are the most common disorder of thyroid gland. In Egypt, nodular goiter occurs in 4%-7% of the population. New radiological imaging techniques might be promising for the differential diagnosis of thyroid nodularity’s. Objective: to determine the diagnostic role of diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) in the differentiation of malignant and benign thyroid nodules by using histopathological study as the reference standard. Patients and Methods: 35 patients were included in this study (28 females and 7 males), their ages vary from (12 years to 75 years) with mean age of 48.65 (±14.72). All patients were referred to the surgical department, El Houssin University Hospital in the time period from July 2018 to August 2019 with thyroid gland enlargement. Results: In our study, there were 7(20.6%) males and 28 (80%) females in the patients group. Percentage of benign thyroid nodule was 52.9%. Percentage of malignant thyroid nodules was 47.1%. apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value was calculated for both benign and malignant nodules, the range of ADC values for benign thyroid nodules were (0.03 to 3.5) of mean (1.86 ± 0.82) and (0.5 to 1.5) of mean (1.04 ± 0.2), p value was significant with a cut off value 1.2 with 93% sensitivity and 83% specificity. Conclusion: DWI provides very useful and promising results on the nature of a thyroid nodule. Even these results may have a role in the selection of nodules that were going to undergo fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC). Although these results were promising, further investigations are needed with larger patient groups.