Fig 1.
Flow chart illustrating patient selection process.
Table 1.
Baseline characteristics of study population.
Fig 2.
Axial CT images of arterial phase (a, d), DECT-derived contrast-enhancement (b, e), and Rho/Z (c, f) maps of two patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma. A 47-year-old female patient with a benign lymph node at left cervical level II (a, b, c; AUC100keV = 36.7, HUarterial = 0.32, Zeff = 0.91, CM = 0.58, IC = 0.56, λHU = 4.7), and a 53-year-old male patient with a metastatic lymph node at left cervical level IV (d, e, f; AUC100keV = 43.5, HUarterial = 0.41, Zeff = 0.93, CM = 0.62, IC = 0.58, λHU = 5.6).
Table 2.
Comparison of conventional and dual-energy CT findings of benign and metastatic lymph nodes.
Table 3.
Interrater agreement of conventional CT and US findings.
Table 4.
Predictive performance of conventional and dual-energy CT parameters.
Fig 3.
Receiver operating characteristic curves for diagnostic performance in predicting metastatic LNs based on DECT parameters alone (HUarterial, IC, CM, Zeff, AUC100keV) and in combination with suspicious features on US (hyperechogenicity, round shape, cystic component).