Convolutional Neural Network in Periodontology – Innovative Technology or New Era? – A Review

Abstract

Periodontitis is an inflammatory disease that affects the supporting tissues and bone around the teeth. In severe situations, it can result in tooth loss. This disease is most prevalent in rural and remote areas, where dental visits are few and far between. As a result, allied health practitioners will need a periodontal screening tool to diagnose periodontitis for early detection & also for prediction. Clinical evaluation and radiograph examination by subject experts are two of the most common approaches used today to diagnose periodontal disorders. Due to numerous shortcomings of the traditional diagnosis paradigm — inaccuracy due to human error, inconsistent evaluations by individual examiners, and a lack of time to parse through vast volumes of data to arrive at accurate diagnoses — there is an increasing need for a more systematic approach to diagnose Periodontal conditions. As a result, computer-based technology will play a key role, as they provide a variety of diagnostic and detection methods for diseases like gingivitis, dental plaque, and periodontitis. Dentistry has evolved from a very long time. Technologies tend to develop day by day, which tends to makes our everyday life easier and comfortable. Over the last decade, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have opened the door to a wide range of applications, including facial and speech recognition, climate mapping, colorization of black-and-white videos, record analysis and preservation, and so on. CNN can act as an unsupervised diagnostic tool in Periodontology, however, has been extremely limited, primarily due to hardware constraints, but also because of the lack of efficient interaction between the exclusive disciplines of AI and dentistry. It is safe to suppose that with the right algorithms and the skills of examiners trained in both dentistry and neural networks, transformative leaps in dental diagnostics and prognostics can be achieved, ushering in a new age in periodontology diagnosis.