Ex Vivo Estimation of Photoacoustic Imaging for Detecting Thyroid Microcalcifications

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic utility of PAI at detecting thyroid microcalcifications at 700 nm laser wavelengths. METHODS This study included 36 resected samples in 18 patients. To evaluate the PA manifestation of microcalcifications in PAI, gray level histogram and co-occurrence matrix (COM) texture parameters were extracted from the 3 fixed ROI US and PA images, respectively, per sample. We compared the textural parameters obtained from specimen PAIs between samples with punctate microcalcifications on specimen radiography and those without microcalcifications. RESULTS On specimen US, the mean value (2748.4 ± 862.5) of samples with microcalcifications on specimen radiography was higher than that (1961.9 ± 780.2) of those without microcalcifications (P = 0.007). However, there were no significant differences in textural parameters obtained from specimen PAIs between samples with punctate microcalcifications on specimen radiography and those without when applying both the mean value of the three slices of thyroid specimens and the value of the thyroid specimen slice which had the highest value of the mean values in specimen US. CONCLUSION PAI did not show significant PA contrast on thyroid microcalcifications indicating that the experimental setup and protocols should be enhanced, e.g., method of complete blood rejection from ex vivo specimens, the multi-wavelength spectroscopic PA imaging method which can solely extract the PA signal from microcalcifications even with high spectral interferences, or PA imaging with narrower slice thickness using 2-dimensional array transducer, etc.