A New Radio-isotopic Procedure in Small Size Thyroid Nodule Detection: A Preliminary Study

To evaluate the usefulness of a new high resolution portable minicamera, an imaging probe (IP) served by a 2GHz Pentium IV Compaq notebook, in the detection and in the functional evaluation of small (< 1 cm) thyroid nidules which are usually not easy indentifiable at thyrois scintigraphy (TS) acquired with conventional Anger Camera (AC). Our preliminary data seem to suggest that IP may be useful in both detection and funcitional evaluation of small size thyroid nodules; moreover the procedure proved more sensitve than pinhole TS which missed all except one non functioning <0.5 cm nodules; thus, IP could be more reliable method than TS in combination with US to better evaluate small size nodules.