Development and Validation of a Diagnostic Nomogram for the Preoperative Differentiation Between Follicular Thyroid Carcinoma and Follicular Thyroid Adenomas

Objective The aim of the study was to construct and validate a nomogram for differentiating follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) from follicular thyroid adenoma (FTA). Methods Two hundred patients with pathologically confirmed thyroid follicular neoplasms were retrospectively analyzed. The patients were randomly divided into a training set (n = 140) and validation set (n = 60). Baseline data including demographics, CT (computed tomography) signs, and radiomic features were analyzed. Predictive models were developed and compared to build a nomogram. The predictive effectiveness of it was evaluated by the area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Results The CT model, radiomic model and combination model showed excellent discrimination (AUCs [95% confidence interval] = 0.847 [0.766–0.928], 0.863 [0.746–0.932], 0.913 [0.850–0.975]). The nomogram based on the combination model showed remarkable discrimination in the training and validation sets. The calibration curves suggested good consistency between actual observation and prediction. Conclusions This study proposed a nomogram that can accurately and intuitively predict the malignancy potential of follicular thyroid neoplasms.