Affiliations: [a] Department of Ultrasound, Guangdong Medical University Affiliated Hospital, Zhanjiang, China
| [b] Department of Medical Ultrasound, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Ultrasound Research and Education Institute, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
| [c] Thyroid Institute, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
| [d] Shanghai Research Center for Thyroid Diseases, Shanghai, China
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Hui-Xiong Xu, Department of Medical Ultrasound, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Ultrasound Research and Education Institute, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200072, China. Tel.: +86 759 2387531; Fax: +86 759 2231754; E-mail: [email protected]..
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Xiao-Hong Xu, Department of Ultrasound, Guangdong Medical University Affiliated Hospital, Zhanjiang, 524001, China. Tel.: +86 21 66307539; Fax: +86 21 66301031; E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to compare the diagnostic performance of Virtual Touch Tissue Imaging & Quantification (VTIQ) and Virtual Touch Tissue Quantification (VTQ) in differentiating benign from malignant thyroid nodules (TNs). MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study 107 TNs in 107 patients were enrolled and analyzed. All of them were detected by conventional ultrasound (US) and confirmed by fine-needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy or surgery. VTIQ and VTQ examinations were performed on each nodule. Thereafter the median and mean of shear wave speed (SWS) values in lesions on VTIQ and VTQ were computed (SWS-median and SWS-mean). With cytological results of FNA and histological results adopted as the reference standard, area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of VTIQ and VTQ in differentiation of TNs. RESULTS: Among the 107 lesions, 19 were papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs), 1 was medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and 87 were benign. In total lesions, AUROC-median in VTIQ was significantly higher than that in VTQ (0.851 vs.0.759; p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: VTIQ and VTQ were equivalent in diagnosing TNs when using SWS-mean, whereas VTIQ showed better performance in comparison with VTQ when using SWS-median.
