Feasibility of qualitative diagnosis of small pulmonary nodules (≤1 cm) using spiral CT scan / 实用放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the feasibility of qualitative diagnosis of small pulmonary nodules (≤1 cm) using multi‐plane reconstruction (MPR) and volume rendering (VR) techniques based on spiral CT scan .Methods The CT images of 190 patients with small pulmonary nodules (≤1 cm) were analyzed retrospectively ,and compared the detection rates of several imaging features among different pathological types of nodules .Results In these 190 patients who were diagnosed as malignance by CT ,168 were confirmed by pathology with an accuracy rate of 88 .4% .The imaging features such as ground glass nodule ,vascular convergence in the benign group were significantly lower than those in the malignant group ,however the solid nodule was observed more frequently in the malignant group (P0 .05) .Except air bronchogram and vascular convergence ,some imaging features (pure ground glass nodule ,part solid ground glass nodule ,solid nodule) showed a decreasing trend ,whereas some others (speculation ,lobulation ,vacuole sign and pleural tag ) were increased among different pathological types of malignant nodules .The linear trend passed the significant test at 0 .017 level .Conclusion CT multi‐plane reconstruction (MPR) and volume rendering (VR) techniques can sufficiently demonstrate the malignant signs in small pulmonary nodules (≤1 cm ) ,can improve to identify different pathological types of such small pulmonary lesions .