Anne-Roos Schrader

LUMC

In short, Anne-Roos Schrader's research entails the following: 

Artificial Intelligence for Diagnosis of Cutaneous Lymphomas – the AID-CLYM study  

'Cutaneous lymphoma (CL) is a rare and heterogeneous group of hematological skin cancers that is largely distinct from its systemic counterparts in clinical presentation, histopathology, and biological behavior. Therefore, CLs require different therapeutical management. For correct classification and therapeutic management, patients with (suspicion of) CL need timely referral to an expert center. In most CL subtypes, however, diagnosis is challenging and cases are easily mistaken for inflammatory dermatoses, such as eczema or drug reactions.

Recent studies demonstrated that artificial intelligence (AI) is capable of recognizing patterns in digital pathology images and that these can be used to generate computer-based predictions. This novel AI-based approach, however, has not yet been studied in diagnosis of CL patients. With the funding by the Hanarth Fonds, the departments of Pathology and Dermatology of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the national referral center for patients with CL, will study whether artificial intelligence can improve the process of referral and diagnostics for patients with these rare variants of skin cancer. For this project, the LUMC will collaborate with the Leiden Institute of Computer Science (LIACS).' 

Brief summary of progress / results February 2024

The AID-CLYM study officially started on December 1, 2023. The team has appointed two enthusiastic researchers who will shape the project over the next 4 years, namely Siemen Brussee and Pieter Valkema. Even though the project has only just officially started, major steps have already been taken in building the dataset that now consists of whole-slide images of more than 1000 skin lymphoma patients. Based on this set, the first pilot models were run to distinguish the most common type of skin lymphoma, mycosis fungoides (MF), from MF-like inflammatory skin diseases. We expect to publish the results shortly. In addition, the research team has laid the foundation for European collaboration by establishing the Cutaneous Lymphoma International Digital Pathology (CLIDIPA) Registry, which will serve as an international validation cohort for the models developed within the AID-CLYM study.