Semi-quantitative study of benign and malignant thyroid nodules by color Doppler ultrasound
Xiangdong Chen · Journal of Clinical Ultrasound in Medicine · 2012
Objective To evaluate the thyroid nodules by Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve(ROC curve) synthetically,and then to choose the optimal operating point for diagnosis.Methods Compared with the operational and pathologic results,eighty-one thyroid nodules were studied by two-dimensional and color Doppler ultrasound.The size,configuration,margin,echo halo,internal echo,calcification,liquefaction,aspect ratio and blood flow of thyroid nodules were analyzed,and 7 indexes were selected for semi-quantitatively grading,then the scores were added according to the grading indexes,and finally to evaluate the malignant nodules by the ROC curve drew with the above-mentioned ultrasound performances,and meanwhile to find the diagnosis point of the best Youden index.Results The best correlation index was configuration,the second place was calcification.The index of size,liquefaction and blood flow were not significanfly correlated with differentiation between benign and malignant thyroid nodules,The area under the ROC curve was 0.942(P0.05),and the optimal Youden index was 0.738,the operational point was 13.Conclusion The color Doppler ultrasound is an accurate evaluation method in the differentiation of benign and malignant thyroid nodules by ROC curve of multiple index grading system.