Publications by authors named "Adam J Shephard"

Article Synopsis
  • Oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) is challenging due to its risk of turning malignant and the unreliability of current grading systems to predict this, leading to high observer variability.
  • A new AI-based score focusing on intra-epithelial lymphocytes (IELs) was developed to assess OED using a digital dataset of 219 tissue samples, which outperformed traditional pathologist evaluations.
  • The study found that higher IEL scores were significantly linked to more severe OED and a greater likelihood of malignant transformation, suggesting IELs could serve as valuable prognostic indicators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) is a premalignant histopathological diagnosis given to lesions of the oral cavity. Its grading suffers from significant inter-/intra-observer variability, and does not reliably predict malignancy progression, potentially leading to suboptimal treatment decisions. To address this, we developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, that assigns an Oral Malignant Transformation (OMT) risk score based on the Haematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) stained whole slide images (WSIs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is amongst the most common cancers, with more than 377,000 new cases worldwide each year. OSCC prognosis remains poor, related to cancer presentation at a late stage, indicating the need for early detection to improve patient prognosis. OSCC is often preceded by a premalignant state known as oral epithelial dysplasia (OED), which is diagnosed and graded using subjective histological criteria leading to variability and prognostic unreliability.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Structural segmentation of T1-weighted (T1w) MRI has shown morphometric differences, both compared to controls and longitudinally, following a traumatic brain injury (TBI). While many patients with TBI present with abnormalities on structural MRI images, most neuroimaging software packages have not been systematically evaluated for accuracy in the presence of these pathology-related MRI abnormalities. The current study aimed to assess whether acute MRI lesions (MRI acquired 7-71 days post-injury) cause error in the estimates of brain volume produced by the semi-automated segmentation tool, Freesurfer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF