Objectives: To evaluate the clinical usefulness of texture analysis in ultrasonography (US) of head and neck masses.
Methods: Sixty-one cases with salivary or neck masses were examined by US with a linear 7.5MHz array. Images were digitized and quantitatively evaluated by two-dimensional gray-scale clustering using two texture indices, M and SD, as measures of coarseness and homogeneity respectively.
Results: Coarseness of Warthin's tumors was significantly higher than that of the other salivary tumors. Malignant lymphomas had finer texture values than other lymph node lesions.
Conclusions: Quantitative texture analysis appears to be a useful complement in diagnostic US.