Incorporation of shear wave elastography into a prediction model in the assessment of cervical lymph nodes.

Rationale and objectivesTo assess the performance of shear wave elastography (SWE) and an extended model in predicting malignant cervical lymph nodes (LNs).Materials and methods109 patients who underwent ultrasound (US) and SWE before needle biopsy were enrolled. The optimal cutoff value of elasticity indices (EIs) was determined by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The c-statistic, net reclassification improvement (NRI) and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) were used to compare extended model and traditional one.ResultsMalignant LNs had higher EIs than benign nodes (p ConclusionThe parameter of SWE theoretically improve the model performance. However, its real clinical impact is minor, as the parameters of US-based model is already very robust. SWE can be considered as an adjunctive quantitative tool beyond conventional US examination