Predicting central lymph node metastasis in patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma based on ultrasound radiomic and morphological features analysis

Objectives To build a combined model based on the ultrasound radiomic and morphological features, and evaluate its diagnostic performance for preoperative prediction of central lymph node metastasis (CLNM) in patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). Method A total of 295 eligible patients, who underwent preoperative ultrasound scan and were pathologically diagnosed with unifocal PTC were included at our hospital from October 2019 to July 2022. According to ultrasound scanners, patients were divided into the training set (115 with CLNM; 97 without CLNM) and validation set (45 with CLNM; 38 without CLNM). Ultrasound radiomic, morphological, and combined models were constructed using multivariate logistic regression. The diagnostic performance was assessed by the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic curve, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. Results A combined model was built based on the morphology, boundary, length diameter, and radiomic score. The AUC was 0.960 (95% CI, 0.924–0.982) and 0.966 (95% CI, 0.901–0.993) in the training and validation set, respectively. Calibration curves showed good consistency between prediction and observation, and DCA demonstrated the clinical benefit of the combined model. Conclusion Based on ultrasound radiomic and morphological features, the combined model showed a good performance in predicting CLNM of patients with PTC preoperatively.