Artificial Intelligence in Diagnosis of Oral Diseases: A Systematic Review

To understand the role of Artificial intelligence (AI) in oral radiology and its applications.

Over the last two decades, the field of AI has undergone phenomenal progression and expansion. Artificial intelligence applications have taken up new roles in dentistry like digitized data acquisition and machine learning and diagnostic applications.

All research papers outlining the population, intervention, control, and outcomes (PICO) questions were searched for in PubMed, ERIC, Embase, CINAHL, database from the last 10 years on first January 2023. Two authors independently reviewed the titles and abstracts of the selected studies, and any discrepancy between the two review authors was handled by a third reviewer. Two independent investigators evaluated all the included studies for the quality assessment using the modified tool for the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS- 2).

After the removal of duplicates and screening of titles and abstracts, 18 full texts were agreed upon for further evaluation, of which 14 that met the inclusion criteria were included in this review. The application of artificial intelligence models has primarily been reported on osteoporosis diagnosis, classification/segmentation of maxillofacial cysts and/or tumors, and alveolar bone resorption. Overall study quality was deemed to be high for two (14%) studies, moderate for six (43%) studies, and low for another six (43%) studies.

The use of AI for patient diagnosis and clinical decision-making can be accomplished with relative ease, and the technology should be regarded as a reliable modality for potential future applications in oral diagnosis.