Table 1. Diagnostic performance of different US parameters and Q-USE in the diagnosis of 140 cytologically indeterminate (Thy 3) thyroid follicular lesions.
| Malignant nodules | Benign nodules | Sensitivity | Specificity | NPV | PPV | Accuracy | OR | p value | |
| Ecogenicity | |||||||||
| Ipoechoic/mixed | 31 | 43 | 77.5 | 57.0 | 86.4 | 41.9 | 67.2 | 4.6 | <0.001 |
| Others | 9 | 57 | (61.5–89.2) | (46.7–66.9) | (75.7–93.6) | (30.5–53.9) | (59.1–75.4) | (2.0–10.4) | |
| Microcalcifications | |||||||||
| Present | 20 | 36 | 50.0 | 64.0 | 76.2 | 35.7 | 57.0 | 1.8 | 0.127 |
| Absent | 20 | 64 | (33.8–66.2) | (53.8–73.4) | (65.7–84.8) | (23.4–49.6) | (47.8–66.2) | (0.9–3.7) | |
| Irregular Margins | |||||||||
| Present | 28 | 8 | 70.0 | 92.0 | 88.5 | 77.8 | 81.0 | 26.8 | <0.001 |
| Absent | 12 | 92 | (53.5–83.4) | (84.8–96.5) | (80.7–93.9) | (60.8–89.9) | (73.3–88.7) | (10.1–71.3) | |
| Vascularization | |||||||||
| Type 3 | 36 | 92 | 90.0 | 8.0 | 66.7 | 28.1 | 49.0 | 0.8 | 0.703 |
| Others | 4 | 8 | (76.3–97.2) | (3.5–15.2) | (34.9–90.1) | (20.5–36.8) | (43.6–54.4) | (0.2–2.6) | |
| Strain ratio | |||||||||
| <2.05 | 5 | 92 | 87.5 | 92.0 | 94.8 | 81.4 | 89.8 | 80.5 | <0.001 |
| >2.05 | 35 | 8 | (73.2–95.8) | (84.8–96.5) | (88.4–98.3) | (66.6–91.6) | (83.9–95.6) | (25.1–257.0) | |
NPV, negative predictive value; PPV, positive predictive value; OR, odds ratio. In brackets the 95% confidence interval.