Optical coherence tomography for thyroid pathology: 3D analysis of tissue microstructure.

To investigate the potential of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to distinguish between normal and pathologic thyroid tissue, 3D OCT images were acquired on ex vivo thyroid samples from adult subjects (n=22) diagnosed with a variety of pathologies. The follicular structure was analyzed in terms of count, size, density and sphericity. Results showed that OCT images highly agreed with the corresponding histopatology and the calculated parameters were representative of the follicular structure variation. The analysis of OCT volumes provides quantitative information that could make automatic classification possible. Thus, OCT can be beneficial for intraoperative surgical guidance or in the pathology assessment routine.