Callstrom, Matthew R.

Thyroid cancer is the fastest growing age and gender adjusted cancer in 2011 according the American Cancer Society. The majority of the clinically diagnosed thyroid nodules are benign while less than 5% represent intrathyroidal cancers. Currently, the clinical gold-standard procedure for assessing the thyroid nodules is needle biopsy, a procedure that is associated with significant financial burden as well as pain and risk for patients. Therefore, a noninvasive, affordable, and potentially widely available method to differentiate between benign and malignant thyroid nodules can play an important role in reducing the number of unnecessary biopsies. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of two acoustic radiation force elastography techniques, shear wave dispersion ultrasound vibrometry (SDUV) and comb-push ultrasound shear wave elastography (CUSE imaging), in identifying thyroid nodules (imaging) and differentiating between benign and malignant pathologies based on their elasticity and viscosity (SDUV measurements). Our preliminary results show that the measured shear elasticity and shear viscosity parameters depend on tissue type; hence, these measurements may be utilized to differentiate between healthy normal thyroid tissue, benign nodules, and malignant nodules. Further studies on a large population of patients is required to better evaluate the role of the combination of elasticity and viscosity properties of tissue in differentiating various thyroid nodules.