Clinical application of real-time shear wave elastography in diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid solid nodules

Objective To evaluate the clinical value of Young's modulus by supersonic shear wave elastography (SWE) in differential diagnosis of thyroid solid nod1ules.Methods Eighty-three patients with 113 solid nodules were examined by SWE.All the nodules were confirmed by pathology.According to Young's modulus,a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn,and it used to identify the value of optimal operating point for differential diagnosis of thyroid nodules.Results ① The mean of Young's modulus of benign nodules was (23.57 ± 9.35)kPa,which was significantly different from the valve of malignant nodules (43.73 ± 19.82) kPa ( t =6.31,P =0.00).(②) It showed that the optimal operating point of ROC curve as 27.49,with high sensitivity(93.2％),specificity(81.2％) and accuracy (85.8％).The area under ROC curve was 0.91.Conclusions SWE is a newly quantitative technique of ultrasonography,which is helpful to identify and distinguish in the differential diagnosis of thyroid nodules. Key words: Ultrasonography; Thyroid nodule; Diagnosis,differential