Trial Information

Efficacy of Shear Wave Ultrasound Elastography in Noninvasive Diagnosis of Thyroid Nodules

Thyroid nodules are a common medical problem. With the wide use of various imaging
modalities, incidentally detected thyroid nodules are becoming more common. However most of
these nodules are benign with only a small proportion of 5-10% being malignant. With the
increasing number of nodules detected, evaluation of these thyroid nodules presents a
diagnostic challenge since the imaging modality used for evaluation at present, i.e.,
ultrasound (US) alone, has a low specificity of approximately 50-70%. In order to improve
specificity to confidently diagnose malignancy in the thyroid nodule, a fine needle
aspiration (FNA) biopsy is performed.

In recent years, US elastography has been shown to have high specificity of 90- 98% in
various studies in differentiating between benign and malignant nodules. US elastography
works on the principle of detecting the stiffness within a tissue by applying compression
which can be manual compression or by generation of a remote radiation force by focused
ultrasonic beams called as shear waves. Shear Wave Ultrasound (SWUS) elastography is an
objective method of US elastography that detects the stiffness within the nodule since the
strength of the shear wave generated is known and can be controlled. SWUS elastography has
shown promise in being able to noninvasively diagnose papillary carcinoma in previous
studies involving preoperative patients.

The investigators propose to perform a study to investigate the efficacy of SWUS
elastography in diagnosing malignant thyroid nodules and noninvasively decreasing the number
of FNAs performed by avoiding FNA in benign nodules. The Investigators will enroll patients
with thyroid nodules before they undergo FNA biopsy or surgery. We also propose to compare
routine US and SWUS elastography and their combined use in differentiating malignant from
benign nodules. The investigators hypothesize that SWUS elastography can be used as a
noninvasive screening tool, prior to an FNA, to screen out benign and malignant nodules with
high level of confidence and reduce the number of biopsies in the future.