A pre-trained convolutional neural network based method for thyroid nodule diagnosis.

•A hybrid approach is proposed to diagnose thyroid nodules in ultrasound.•It is a fusion of two pre-trained CNNs with different architectures.•All the CNNs are pre-trained with 1.3million natural images from ImageNet database.•A multi-view strategy is applied to improve the performance of CNNs.•Large clinical thyroid nodule images are studied in our experiments.•Novel single-valued integrated indices called TMI are determined.•It is easy and transparent of TMI to diagnose thyroid nodules using this technique.