Artificial intelligence in the diagnosis of dental diseases on panoramic radiographs: a preliminary study

BMC Oral Health

Research

Fan Zhang¹  Xiaojuan Li¹  Kangjian Shi¹  Zhi Chen²  Jing Zhao²  Zhe Sun²  Nengjie Lin²  Junhua Zhu²  Keying Shi²  Feifei Yu²  Yuanna Zheng²  Yueyuan Yu² 

[1]College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

[2]School/Hospital of Stomatology, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

关键词: Artificial intelligence (AI);    Dental disease;    Diagnosis;    Panoramic radiograph;    Preliminary reading;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12903-023-03027-6

 received in 2023-01-22, accepted in 2023-05-09,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundArtificial intelligence (AI) has been introduced to interpret the panoramic radiographs (PRs). The aim of this study was to develop an AI framework to diagnose multiple dental diseases on PRs, and to initially evaluate its performance.MethodsThe AI framework was developed based on 2 deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), BDU-Net and nnU-Net. 1996 PRs were used for training. Diagnostic evaluation was performed on a separate evaluation dataset including 282 PRs. Sensitivity, specificity, Youden’s index, the area under the curve (AUC), and diagnostic time were calculated. Dentists with 3 different levels of seniority (H: high, M: medium, L: low) diagnosed the same evaluation dataset independently. Mann-Whitney U test and Delong test were conducted for statistical analysis (ɑ=0.05).ResultsSensitivity, specificity, and Youden’s index of the framework for diagnosing 5 diseases were 0.964, 0.996, 0.960 (impacted teeth), 0.953, 0.998, 0.951 (full crowns), 0.871, 0.999, 0.870 (residual roots), 0.885, 0.994, 0.879 (missing teeth), and 0.554, 0.990, 0.544 (caries), respectively. AUC of the framework for the diseases were 0.980 (95%CI: 0.976–0.983, impacted teeth), 0.975 (95%CI: 0.972–0.978, full crowns), and 0.935 (95%CI: 0.929–0.940, residual roots), 0.939 (95%CI: 0.934–0.944, missing teeth), and 0.772 (95%CI: 0.764–0.781, caries), respectively. AUC of the AI framework was comparable to that of all dentists in diagnosing residual roots (p > 0.05), and its AUC values were similar to (p > 0.05) or better than (p < 0.05) that of M-level dentists for diagnosing 5 diseases. But AUC of the framework was statistically lower than some of H-level dentists for diagnosing impacted teeth, missing teeth, and caries (p < 0.05). The mean diagnostic time of the framework was significantly shorter than that of all dentists (p < 0.001).ConclusionsThe AI framework based on BDU-Net and nnU-Net demonstrated high specificity on diagnosing impacted teeth, full crowns, missing teeth, residual roots, and caries with high efficiency. The clinical feasibility of AI framework was preliminary verified since its performance was similar to or even better than the dentists with 3–10 years of experience. However, the AI framework for caries diagnosis should be improved.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023

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