ANATOMICAL AND CLINICAL METHODS FOR MORPHOMETRY THYROID GLAND

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the possibilities of using ultrasound diagnostics and various morphological methods to determine the parameters of the thyroid gland, as well as identifying the advantages and disadvantages of these methods to study its shape and topographic features. The object of the study was the thyroid glands obtained at the autopsy and their images during ultrasound examination. The subject of the study were women of mature age. The anatomical methods used were dissection, silicone and epoxy plastination and morphometry.
Silicone plastination consisted of several consecutive steps that did not result in organ deformity. Measurements were taken on gross specimen. Producing of epoxy plastinates involved several steps that resulted in epoxy histotopograms. Thyroid gland parameters were measured on scanned images in Adobe Photoshop CC (2019). The ultrasound examination was performed in a single stage and included both transverse and longitudinal images of the thyroid gland.
Using these methods, linear parameters of the thyroid gland, its shape and syntopy variants were determined. The shape of the thyroid gland was determined on silicone plastinates and by ultrasound scanning. It was found that the most common glands at macroscopic examination were "butterfly" shaped (40%) and H-shaped (26.6%) glands. A regular ellipsoidal shape (28.5%); ellipsoid flattened in the frontal plane (24.6%); ellipsoidal shape shortened along the longitudinal axis (17.7%); and ellipsoidal shape flattened in the sagittal plane (24.6%) were revealed during ultrasound scanning with equal frequency.
The ultrasound examination was found to study the intravital characteristics of the organ, the silicone plastination technique to visualise the external features of the organ and the epoxy technique to study its internal structure at the mesoscopic level.