Characteristics of Clinically Classified Oral Lichen Planus in Optical Coherence Tomography: A Descriptive Case-Series Study

Yuliia Gruda; Marius Albrecht; Michaela Buckova; Dominik Haim; Guenter Lauer; Edmund Koch; Korinna Joehrens; Christian Schnabel; Jonas Golde; Jiawen Li; Robert A McLaughlin; Julia Walther

doi:10.3390/diagnostics13162642

Characteristics of Clinically Classified Oral Lichen Planus in Optical Coherence Tomography: A Descriptive Case-Series Study

Diagnostics (Basel). 2023 Aug 10;13(16):2642. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics13162642.

Authors

Yuliia Gruda¹, Marius Albrecht^{1

2}, Michaela Buckova³, Dominik Haim³, Guenter Lauer³, Edmund Koch⁴, Korinna Joehrens², Christian Schnabel^{1

4}, Jonas Golde¹, Jiawen Li^{5

6}, Robert A McLaughlin^{6

7}, Julia Walther¹

Affiliations

¹ Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, TU Dresden, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany.
² Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Pathology, TU Dresden, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany.
³ Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, Clinic and Policlinic of Oral- and Maxillofacial Surgery, TU Dresden, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany.
⁴ Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Clinical Sensoring and Monitoring, TU Dresden, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany.
⁵ Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia.
⁶ Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia.
⁷ Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia.

Abstract

Malignant transformation of oral lichen planus (OLP) into oral squamous cell carcinoma is considered as one of the most serious complications of OLP. For the early detection of oral cancer in OLP follow-up, accurate localization of the OLP center is still difficult but often required for confirmatory biopsy with histopathological examination. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) offers the potential for more reliable biopsy sampling in the oral cavity as it is capable of non-invasively imaging the degenerated oral layer structure. In this case-series study with 15 patients, features of clinically classified forms of OLP in OCT cross-sections were registered and correlated with available histologic sections. Besides patients with reticular, atrophic, erosive and plaque-like OLP, two patients with leukoplakia were included for differentiation. The results show that OCT yields information about the epithelial surface, thickness and reflectivity, as well as the identifiability of the basement membrane and the vessel network, which could be used to complement the visual clinical appearance of OLP variants and allow a more accurate localization of the OLP center. This forms the basis for further studies on OCT-assisted non-invasive clinical classification of OLP, with the aim of enabling decision support for biopsy sampling in the future.

Keywords: biomedical imaging; endoscopy; fiber optics; histology; human oral mucosa; leukoplakia; optical coherence tomography; oral cancer; oral lichen planus; precancerous lesions.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the Roland Ernst Foundation Dresden under Project: TOMscan, in part by Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme, in part by the Australian Research Council under Grant CE140100003, and in part by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia, under Grants APP1178912, APP2002254, APP2001646 and GNT2008462. The work of Jonas Golde received a Doctoral Scholarship under Project 100284305, in part from the European Union/European Social Fund (ESF) and the Free State of Saxony.