Virtual touch tissue quantification in differential diagnosis of thyroid benign and malignant nodules and its influence factors

Abstract

Objective To investigate the evaluation of virtual touch tissue quantification(VTQ)in differential diagnosis of thyroid benign and malignant nodules and its influence factors.Methods 127 patients with thyroid lesions and its adjacent normal thyroid tissue at the same depth were examined with VTQ.Test results were performed by shear wave velocity value (SWV) on the long axis dimension of the nodules.The maximum(Vmax),minimum(Vmin) value of SWV of thyroid lesions and the SWV(Vn) value of surrounding normal tissue were recorded.The mean value of SWV (Vm) and the ratio of Vm and Vn (Vm/n) were calculated.SWV value of benign and malignant nodules and different pathological types of nodules were analyzed.Receiver-operating characteristic curve(ROC) was drawn to assess the diagnostic efficiency.Results The Vmax,Vmin,Vm,Vm/n of malignant lesions [(4.61 ± 2.65) m/s,(2.74 ± 2.23) m/s,(2.99 ± 0.82)m/s,(1.69 ± 1.07)m/s,respectively] were obviously higher than that of benign nodules [(2.78 ± 0.96)m/s,(1.75 ± 0.60)m/s,(2.31 ± 0.38)m/s,(0.94 ± 0.23)m/s,respectively,P ＜0.01].The SWV value of thyroid papillary carcinoma was higher than that of nodular goiter,thyroid adenoma and Hashimoto's thyroiditis(P ＜0.05).The SWV value of Hashimoto's thyroiditis was higher than that of thyroid adenoma and nodular goiter (P ＜ 0.05).No significant differences of SWV value were found between thyroid adenoma and nodular goiter (P ＞ 0.05).Contrast the area under the receiver-operating curves above four groups of different SWV values,the results showed that Vm had the highest diagnostic value in diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules.When the best cut-off point of Vm was 2.48 m/s,the diagnostic value was highest and the sensitivity and specificity were 97％ and 81 ％.Conclusions VTQ could be used to quantify and evaluate the hardness of thyroid nodules and provided important value for the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules. Key words: Ultrasonongraphy; Thyroid nodule; Elasticity; Virtual touch tissue quantification