Multimode Ultrasonic Technique is Recommended for the Differential Diagnosis of Thyroid Cancer

Background: B-mode ultrasound is one of the most commonly used imaging techniques for evaluating thyroid nodules due to its noninvasive property and excellent performance in terms of discriminating between benign and malignant nodules. However, the accuracy of differential diagnosis strongly depends on the experience of ultrasonographers. In addition to B-mode ultrasound, the elastic mode and contrast-enhanced mode have shown complimentary value in the diagnosis of thyroid nodules. The combination of multiple modes in ultrasonic techniques may effectively undermine diagnostic subjectiveness and improve accuracy. In this study, we evaluated the diagnostic value of combining the three ultrasonic modes for differentiating thyroid cancers.

Methods: In this retrospective study, we analyzed a total of 196 thyroid nodules with suspected malignancies from 185 patients who gave informed consent. Xi'an Jiaotong University granted ethical approval (No. 2018200) to carry out the study within its facilities. All the patients received ultrasonic examinations with the B mode, elastic mode and contrast-enhanced mode, followed by histopathological confirmation by fine-need aspiration or surgery. A predictive multivariate logistic regression model was selected to integrate the variety of data obtained from the three modes.

Results: The combination of three ultrasonic techniques for differentiating malignant from benign thyroid nodules showed the highest diagnostic accuracy of 0.985 compared to the B mode alone (0.841) and the two-mode combination. The accuracy of the B mode combined with the elastic technique was 0.954, and the accuracy of the B mode combined with the contrast-enhanced technique was 0.960.

Discussion: Multimode ultrasonic techniques should be recommended to patients with suspected malignant thyroid nodules in routine clinical practice.