Publications by authors named "M Vranckx"

Prediction of lower third molar eruption is crucial for its timely extraction. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to investigate the prediction of lower third molar eruption and its uprighting with the assistance of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool. The secondary aim was identifying the incidence of fully erupted lower third molars with hygienic cleansability.

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This work presents a joint spatial modeling framework to improve estimation of the spatial distribution of the latent COVID-19 incidence in Belgium, based on test-confirmed COVID-19 cases and crowd-sourced symptoms data as reported in a large-scale online survey. Correction is envisioned for stochastic dependence between the survey's response rate and spatial COVID-19 incidence, commonly known as preferential sampling, but not found significant. Results show that an online survey can provide valuable auxiliary data to optimize spatial COVID-19 incidence estimation based on confirmed cases in situations with limited testing capacity.

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Article Synopsis
  • Small-area methods in spatial epidemiology help identify areas with increased disease risk by comparing observed disease cases to expected cases, typically requiring accurate population data.
  • Issues like confidentiality and poor quality data can hinder these calculations, but this study proposes using a case-control approach to mitigate those challenges with a spatially unstructured control disease.
  • The method was tested on mesothelioma risk in Belgium, using pancreatic cancer as a control, and showed results consistent with traditional models, proving effective in situations where population data is lacking.
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Background: A year after the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the global rollout of vaccines gives us hope of ending the pandemic. Lack of vaccine confidence, however, poses a threat to vaccination campaigns. This study aims at identifying individuals' characteristics that explain vaccine willingness in Flanders (Belgium), while also describing trends over time (July-December 2020).

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