Assessment of significance of features acquired from thyroid ultrasonograms in Hashimoto’s disease

Introduction: This paper concerns the analysis of the features obtained from thyroid ultrasound images in left and right transverse and longitudinal sections. In the image analysis, the thyroid lobe is treated as a texture for healthy subjects and patients with Hashimoto's disease. The applied methods of analysis and image processing were profiled to obtain 10 features of the image. Then, their significance in the classification was shown.Material: In this study, the examined group consisted of 29 healthy subjects aged 18 to 60 and 65 patients with Hashimoto's disease. For each subject, four ultrasound images were taken. They were all in transverse and longitudinal sections of the right and left lobe of the thyroid, which gave 376 images in total.Method: 10 different features obtained from each ultrasound image were suggested. The analyzed thyroid lobe was marked automatically or manually with a rectangular element.Results: The analysis of 10 features and the creation for each one of them their own decision tree configuration resulted in distinguishing 3 most significant features. The results of the quality of classification show accuracy above 94% for a non-trimmed decision tree

Ultrasonography as a New, Non-Invasive Imagistic Technique Used for the Diagnosis and Monitoring of Psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease that involves the skin, nails, joints and other organs, being a systemic disease. Regardless of the clinical form, sonography can be effectively used to complete the clinical diagnosis

Influence of the measurement method of features in ultrasound images of the thyroid in the diagnosis of Hashimoto's disease

Introduction: This paper shows the influence of a measurement method of features in the diagnosis of Hashimoto's disease. Sensitivity of the algorithm to changes in the parameters of the ROI, namely shift, resizing and rotation, has been presented. The obtained results were also compared to the methods known from the literature in which decision trees or average gray level thresholding are used.Material: In the study, 288 images obtained from patients with Hashimoto's disease and 236 images from healthy subjects have been analyzed. For each person, an ultrasound examination of the left and right thyroid lobe in transverse and longitudinal sections has been performed.Method: With the use of the developed algorithm, a discriminant analysis has been conducted for the following five options: linear, diaglinear, quadratic, diagquadratic and mahalanobis. The left and right thyroid lobes have been analyzed both together and separately in transverse and longitudinal sections. In addition, the algorithm enabled to analyze specificity and sensitivity as well as the impact of sensitivity of ROI shift, repositioning and rotation on the measured features.Results and summary: The analysis has shown that the highest accuracy was obtained for the longitudinal section (LD) with the method of linear, yielding sensitivity = 76%, specificity = 95% and accuracy ACC = 84%. The conducted sensitivity assessment confirms that changes in the position and size of the ROI have little effect on sensitivity and specificity. The analysis of all cases, that is, images of the left and right thyroid lobes in transverse and longitudinal sections, has shown specificity ranging from 60% to 95% and sensitivity from 62% to 89%. Additionally, it was shown that the value of ACC for the method using decision trees as a classifier is equal to 84% for the analyzed data. Thresholding of average brightness of the ROI gave ACC equal to 76%

Identification of targets of Twist1 transcription factor in anaplastic thyroid cancer

Thyroid cancer is the most common malignancy of endocrine organs and accounts for about 1% of newly diagnosed cancer cases. Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is one of the most aggressive human tumors; it is characterized by local invasion, distant metastasis, chemoresistance and radioresistance. Effective systemic therapy capable of reversing the aggressive biology of this disease is currently not available. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying anaplastic thyroid cancer pathogenesis. Through, a cDNA microarray analysis we have isolated Twist1 as a gene up-regulated in ATC. Twist1 is a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor that has been shown to contribute to cancer development and progression but its mechanism of action is poorly defined. In this Dissertation we showed that approximately 50% of ATCs up-regulated Twist1 with respect to normal thyroids as well as to poorly and well-differentiated thyroid carcinomas. Silencing of Twist1 by RNA interference in ATC cells reduced cell migration and invasion and increased sensitivity to apoptosis. The ectopic expression of Twist1 in thyroid cancer cells induced resistance to apoptosis and increased cell migration and invasion. To uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying Twist1 biological effects, we have performed a gene expression profile of Twist1 ectopically expressing thyroid cancer TPC cells in comparison to vector control cells. We founded 158 genes up-regulated and 221 genes down-regulated by more than 1.5 fold in TPC-Twist1 cells. We used the Ingenuity Systems Pathway Analysis (IPA) software to classify these genes. Consistent with the biological function of Twist1 in ATC, the top three molecular and cellular functions enriched in TPC-Twist1 cells were: cellular movement, cellular growth and proliferation, cell death and survival. In this dissertation we focused on the up-regulated genes by more than 4 fold. Silencing of the 11 top up-regulated genes reduced cell viability of TPC-Twist1 cells. Silencing of COL1A1, KRT7, PDZK1 induced also apoptosis. Silencing of HS6ST2, THRB, ID4, RHOB, and PDZK1IP, also impaired cell migration and invasion of TPC-Twist1 cells. Thus, our data demonstrate that Twist1 plays a key role in determining malignant features of anaplastic thyroid cancer cells. These effects are mediated by a set of genes whose expression is under Twist1 control. The identified target genes are potential novel molecular determinants of ATC