Artificial intelligence has taken over many realms of our daily lives. With Colgate releasing its ‘artificially intelligent’ toothbrush, we sure are on some way to make the technology’s use in dentistry as well. Here are some ways in which AI is and can potentially aid dentists and transform the oral health division of the health sector.

Need For AI In Dentistry

Like many other fields, dentists also spend a lot of their valuable in time in doing monotonous tasks like going through reports and checking X-rays. They also have to sometimes spend time in scheduling appointments when they cannot accurately know how much time will be required for each appointment, beforehand.

AI can be dentist assistants and help them in these areas and make their time and knowledge more productive than without an AI.

Where Can AI Be Applied In Dentistry

AI is very well known for its ability to forecast. A dental practice management software called Dentem is already being used by dentists. It gathers the patient’s genetic data and predicts whether a patient has strong teeth or not. A complete 3D scan of the patient can be done and the procedures needed for the treatment are automatically suggested by the AI.

A technology like that of artificial intelligence would be very helpful if it is deployed to take care of the hundreds of records that the doctors preserve and help them segregate. An AI-based software called Evidentiae is helping with such a goal. It is a cloud-based software that has all the information from the patient history forms to the patient’s risk. It is designed with an algorithm that gets its information from medical and dental histories as well as from charted exam findings to generate an overview of his dental health. It develops an extensive diagnostic opinion for periodontal concerns, biomechanical parameters, functional decision making and dentofacial alterations and provides dentists with the required documentation.

Dentistry.AI is a cloud-based, AI-powered technology for dental caries detection on bitewings X-rays. In a recently published study, they presented the results of a man versus machine caries detection challenge that pitted three practising dentists against Dentistry.AI in evaluating 500 bitewings. The machine outperformed the dentists in a parameter called ‘sensitivity’ in the challenge. Dentists won in ‘precision’, but the machine was a close competition to dentists in precision as well.

Outlook

Researchers are also working on AI which has been trained with some previous set of sample images from patients and learn how to develop technologies that can read dental images and results and then suggest the best possible diagnosis.

VisualDx is a software used by clinicians and is a clinical decision support system software. It uses photographs or diagrams of medical conditions and classifies them as most to least likely. Similar software can also be used in dental healthcare.

There have also been technologies developing to automatically calculate where the braces are needed by the person or not. Not only this but things like how much pressure of the braces has to be applied to what places also have to be determined by AI.

With AI taking over healthcare, it is no surprise that is has taken over the dentistry department as well and we can now very well say that AI in dentistry is very real.