Influence of the measurement method of features in ultrasound images of the thyroid in the diagnosis of Hashimoto's disease

Abstract

Introduction: This paper shows the influence of a measurement method of features in the diagnosis of Hashimoto's disease. Sensitivity of the algorithm to changes in the parameters of the ROI, namely shift, resizing and rotation, has been presented. The obtained results were also compared to the methods known from the literature in which decision trees or average gray level thresholding are used.Material: In the study, 288 images obtained from patients with Hashimoto's disease and 236 images from healthy subjects have been analyzed. For each person, an ultrasound examination of the left and right thyroid lobe in transverse and longitudinal sections has been performed.Method: With the use of the developed algorithm, a discriminant analysis has been conducted for the following five options: linear, diaglinear, quadratic, diagquadratic and mahalanobis. The left and right thyroid lobes have been analyzed both together and separately in transverse and longitudinal sections. In addition, the algorithm enabled to analyze specificity and sensitivity as well as the impact of sensitivity of ROI shift, repositioning and rotation on the measured features.Results and summary: The analysis has shown that the highest accuracy was obtained for the longitudinal section (LD) with the method of linear, yielding sensitivity = 76%, specificity = 95% and accuracy ACC = 84%. The conducted sensitivity assessment confirms that changes in the position and size of the ROI have little effect on sensitivity and specificity. The analysis of all cases, that is, images of the left and right thyroid lobes in transverse and longitudinal sections, has shown specificity ranging from 60% to 95% and sensitivity from 62% to 89%. Additionally, it was shown that the value of ACC for the method using decision trees as a classifier is equal to 84% for the analyzed data. Thresholding of average brightness of the ROI gave ACC equal to 76%. © 2012 Koprowski et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.