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The incidence of thyroid cancer has risen faster than many malignancies and has nearly doubled in the USA
over the past 30 years. Palpable nodules and subclinical nodules detected by imaging are found in a large percentage of
the USA population. Most of these (.>95%) are fortunately benign. This vast reservoir of nodules makes the detection
and diagnosis of thyroid cancer a diagnostic dilemma. Ultrasound guided Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy (FNAB) is
excellent for triaging patients but up to 25% of FNABs are inconclusive. As a result, definitive diagnosis is often only
possible with a diagnostic lobectomy; many thousands of these are performed in the USA annually for ultimately benign
disease. It would be extremely beneficial if we could develop a non-invasive procedure that could assist the
diagnostician in reliably predicting the likelihood of malignancy of otherwise indeterminate thyroid nodules, thereby
reducing the number of these "exploratory/diagnostic" lobectomies performed under general anesthesia. Electrical
Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) was considered as a possible approach to address this problem. However, the diagnostic
accuracy of EIS is too low for routine clinical use to date. In our group, we developed a substantially modified
technology termed Resonance-frequency Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (REIS), which yields usable information
for classifying risk of having breast abnormalities. We preliminarily applied REIS to measure signals on participants
having thyroid nodules aiming to assess whether we can assist in improving diagnosis of indeterminate thyroid nodules.
In this study we present a new multi-probe based REIS device specifically designed for the assessment of indeterminate
thyroid nodules. Our preliminary assessment presented here demonstrates the feasibility of using this proposed REIS
device in a busy tertiary care center.
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