Automatic Dental Plaque Segmentation Based on Local-to-Global Features Fused Self-Attention Network

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Artificial Intelligence in Dentistry
• Medical Imaging Analysis

Background:

• Accurate early dental plaque detection is vital for preventing periodontal diseases and dental caries.
• Current methods struggle with low contrast between plaque and healthy teeth, often requiring dyeing reagents.
• Intelligent segmentation of dental plaque from oral endoscope images is challenging due to visual similarities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel deep learning network with a self-attention module for intelligent dental plaque segmentation.
• To enable accurate, pixel-level plaque detection directly from oral endoscope images without dyeing reagents.
• To improve early detection of dental plaque, aiding in the prevention of periodontal diseases and dental caries.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel network architecture incorporating a self-attention module for super-pixel level analysis.
• Fused multiple-scale complementary information: plaque color distribution, Heat Kernel Signature (HKS) for structure, and Circle-Local Binary Patterns (LBP) for texture.
• Utilized a CNN-based attention module to refine fused features and focus on regions of interest.

Main Results:

• The proposed method achieved superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods, even with a small training dataset.
• Experimental evaluations confirmed the network's ability to accurately segment dental plaque.
• User studies indicated that the method is more accurate than conventional dental examinations by experienced dentists.

Conclusions:

• The novel deep learning network effectively segments dental plaque from oral endoscope images without requiring dyeing reagents.
• The self-attention mechanism and multi-scale feature fusion enhance segmentation accuracy, particularly in challenging cases.
• This AI-driven approach offers a promising tool for early and accurate dental plaque detection, supporting preventative dental care.