Publications by authors named "Louis Vaickus"

The Paris System for Reporting Urine Cytology (TPS) is remarkable for its high predictive value in the detection of high-grade urothelial carcinoma, especially of the bladder. However, universal compliance with TPS-recommended threshold for atypical call rates (15%) and TPS performance in the rarer upper tract urothelial carcinomas (UTUC) are challenging. UTUC diagnosis is compounded by instrumentation artifacts, degenerative changes superimposed on an ambiguous cytology, difficult-to-access location, lack of specific standardized criteria, and a limited number of UTUC-focused studies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Deep learning applied to spatial transcriptomics (ST) helps understand how gene expression relates to tissue structure, allowing for large-scale studies that are more cost-effective compared to traditional methods.
  • Most research has focused on improving algorithms, but there’s a lack of understanding about how tissue preparation and imaging quality impact model training, which is crucial for clinical use.
  • A new enhanced tissue processing and imaging protocol was developed to improve model performance in predicting gene expression, showing promising results when compared to traditional methods using a study involving colorectal cancer patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Recent advancements in cytopathology involve developing consensus rules for diagnosing specimens, improving accuracy and consistency in diagnoses.
  • - These diagnostic systems aim to minimize variability among observers, eliminate vague categories, reduce "atypical" diagnoses, and standardize communication through quantitative scoring.
  • - Computational pathology emerges from these improvements, offering standardized and reproducible diagnoses using quantitative methods, thereby reducing human bias.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Thyroid cytology focuses on diagnosing thyroid nodules, distinguishing between benign and malignant growths, and assessing risk when a clear diagnosis can't be made.
  • Fine-needle aspiration and standardized reporting systems like the Bethesda System streamline the diagnosis process for these nodules.
  • Recent advancements in molecular testing have become important for categorizing patients' risks of malignancy, aiding in the decision-making for treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Summary: Elemental imaging provides detailed profiling of metal bioaccumulation, offering more precision than bulk analysis by targeting specific tissue areas. However, accurately identifying comparable tissue regions from elemental maps is challenging, requiring the integration of hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) slides for effective comparison. Facilitating the streamlined co-registration of Whole Slide Images (WSI) and elemental maps, TRACE enhances the analysis of tissue regions and elemental abundance in various pathological conditions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Successful treatment of solid cancers relies on complete surgical excision of the tumor either for definitive treatment or before adjuvant therapy. Intraoperative and postoperative radial sectioning, the most common form of margin assessment, can lead to incomplete excision and increase the risk of recurrence and repeat procedures. Mohs Micrographic Surgery is associated with complete removal of basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma through real-time margin assessment of 100% of the peripheral and deep margins.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Spatial transcriptomics technologies are revolutionizing research by enabling the study of cellular and molecular dynamics within tissues, enhancing our understanding of development, disease, and tumor environments.
  • Photoaging, caused by sun exposure, affects skin health and is linked to skin cancer, and spatial transcriptomics can provide a reliable method for evaluating its impact and developing new treatments.
  • Despite challenges like high costs and patient variability in current technologies, using routine H&E-stained slides in combination with spatial transcriptomics can help analyze gene expression in skin specimens, potentially revealing valuable insights into photoaging and therapeutic efficacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Graph-based deep learning has shown great promise in cancer histopathology image analysis by contextualizing complex morphology and structure across whole slide images to make high quality downstream outcome predictions (ex: prognostication). These methods rely on informative representations (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Deep learning methods applied to spatial transcriptomics help uncover relationships between gene expression and tissue architecture, especially in diseases, but face challenges due to variability in tissue preparation and small study cohorts.
  • This research explores an improved tissue processing workflow using the Visium CytAssist assay to automate staining and optimize imaging, enabling better spatial transcriptomics profiling.
  • Results show that the enhanced workflow significantly improves the performance of deep learning models in predicting gene expression compared to traditional manual methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Spatial transcriptomics involves studying the spatial organization of gene expression within tissues, offering insights into the molecular diversity of tumors. While spatial gene expression is commonly amalgamated from 1-10 cells across 50-micron spots, recent methods have demonstrated the capability to disaggregate this information at subspot resolution by leveraging both expression and histological patterns. However, elucidating such information from histology alone presents a significant challenge but if solved can better permit spatial molecular analysis at cellular resolution for instances where Visium data is not available, reducing study costs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Intraoperative margin analysis is crucial for the successful removal of cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas (cSCC). Artificial intelligence technologies (AI) have previously demonstrated potential for facilitating rapid and complete tumour removal using intraoperative margin assessment for basal cell carcinoma. However, the varied morphologies of cSCC present challenges for AI margin assessment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The suggested atypia of undetermined significance (AUS) rate for thyroid fine-needle aspiration biopsies is 10% or less. Prompted by a high institutional AUS rate, we examined using molecular testing results (MTR) as a potential quality metric tool to reduce the AUS rate. We correlated MTR with AUS cytologic findings, surgical pathology follow-up, and individual pathologist AUS rates.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Graph-based deep learning has shown great promise in cancer histopathology image analysis by contextualizing complex morphology and structure across whole slide images to make high quality downstream outcome predictions (ex: prognostication). These methods rely on informative representations (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The advent of spatial transcriptomics technologies has heralded a renaissance in research to advance our understanding of the spatial cellular and transcriptional heterogeneity within tissues. Spatial transcriptomics allows investigation of the interplay between cells, molecular pathways and the surrounding tissue architecture and can help elucidate developmental trajectories, disease pathogenesis, and various niches in the tumor microenvironment. Photoaging is the histological and molecular skin damage resulting from chronic/acute sun exposure and is a major risk factor for skin cancer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Deep learning models can infer cancer patient prognosis from molecular and anatomic pathology information. Recent studies that leveraged information from complementary multimodal data improved prognostication, further illustrating the potential utility of such methods. However, current approaches: 1) do not comprehensively leverage biological and histomorphological relationships and 2) make use of emerging strategies to "pretrain" models (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Mohs micrographic surgery is a procedure used for non-melanoma skin cancers that has 97-99% cure rates largely owing to 100% margin analysis enabled by sectioning with real-time, iterative histologic assessment. However, the technique is limited to small and aggressive tumors in high-risk areas because the histopathological preparation and assessment is very time intensive. To address this, paired-agent imaging (PAI) can be used to rapidly screen excised specimens and identify tumor positive margins for guided and more efficient microscopic evaluation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adopting a computational approach for the assessment of urine cytology specimens has the potential to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and reliability of bladder cancer screening, which has heretofore relied on semisubjective manual assessment methods. As rigorous, quantitative criteria and guidelines have been introduced for improving screening practices (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Urine cytology is generally considered the primary approach for screening for recurrence of bladder cancer. However, it is currently unclear how best to use cytological examinations for assessment and early detection of recurrence, beyond identifying a positive finding that requires more invasive methods to confirm recurrence and decide on therapeutic options. Because screening programs are frequent, and can be burdensome, finding quantitative means to reduce this burden for patients, cytopathologists, and urologists is an important endeavor and can improve both the efficiency and reliability of findings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Intraoperative margin analysis is crucial for the successful removal of cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas (cSCC). Artificial intelligence technologies (AI) have previously demonstrated potential for facilitating rapid and complete tumor removal using intraoperative margin assessment for basal cell carcinoma. However, the varied morphologies of cSCC present challenges for AI margin assessment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Over 150 000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) every year, and annually over 50 000 individuals will die from CRC, necessitating improvements in screening, prognostication, disease management, and therapeutic options. Tumor metastasis is the primary factor related to the risk of recurrence and mortality. Yet, screening for nodal and distant metastasis is costly, and invasive and incomplete resection may hamper adequate assessment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Over 150,000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) every year, and annually >50,000 individuals are estimated to die of CRC, necessitating improvements in screening, prognostication, disease management, and therapeutic options. CRC tumors are removed en bloc with surrounding vasculature and lymphatics. Examination of regional lymph nodes at the time of surgical resection is essential for prognostication.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Current Procedural Terminology Codes is a numerical coding system used to bill for medical procedures and services and crucially, represents a major reimbursement pathway. Given that pathology services represent a consequential source of hospital revenue, understanding instances where codes may have been misassigned or underbilled is critical. Several algorithms have been proposed that can identify improperly billed CPT codes in existing datasets of pathology reports.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: We developed a deep learning algorithm to evaluate defecatory patterns to identify dyssynergic defecation using 3-dimensional high definition anal manometry (3D-HDAM).

Aims: We developed a 3D-HDAM deep learning algorithm to evaluate for dyssynergia.

Methods: Spatial-temporal data were extracted from consecutive 3D-HDAM studies performed between 2018 and 2020 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF