Deep-learning systems for diagnosing cleft palate on panoramic radiographs in patients with cleft alveolus

The aim of the present study was to create effective deep learning-based models for diagnosing the presence or absence of cleft palate (CP) in patients with unilateral or bilateral cleft alveolus (CA) on panoramic radiographs.

The panoramic images of 491 patients who had unilateral or bilateral cleft alveolus were used to create two models. Model A, which detects the upper incisor area on panoramic radiographs and classifies the areas into the presence or absence of CP, was created using both object detection and classification functions of DetectNet. Using the same data for developing Model A, Model B, which directly classifies the presence or absence of CP on panoramic radiographs, was created using classification function of VGG-16. The performances of both models were evaluated with the same test data and compared with those of two radiologists.

The recall, precision, and F-measure were all 1.00 in Model A. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) values were 0.95, 0.93, 0.70, and 0.63 for Model A, Model B, and the radiologists, respectively. The AUCs of the models were significantly higher than those of the radiologists.

The deep learning-based models developed in the present study have potential for use in supporting observer interpretations of the presence of cleft palate on panoramic radiographs.