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Updated: Jun 26, 2025
Author Spotlight: Three-Dimensional Cephalometric Landmark Annotation Demonstration on Human Cone Beam Computed Tomography Scans
Published on: September 8, 2023
Automatic cephalometric landmark identification with artificial intelligence: An umbrella review of systematic
Alessandro Polizzi1, Rosalia Leonardi1
1Department of General Surgery and Medical-Surgical Specialties, Section of Orthodontics, University of Catania, Policlinico Universitario "Gaspare Rodolico - San Marco", Via Santa Sofia 78, 95123, Catania, Italy.
Objectives:
The transition from manual to automatic cephalometric landmark identification has not yet reached a consensus for clinical application in orthodontic diagnosis. The present umbrella review aimed to assess artificial intelligence (AI) performance in automatic 2D and 3D cephalometric landmark identification.
Data:
A combination of free text words and MeSH keywords pooled by boolean operators: Automa* AND cephalo* AND ("artificial intelligence" OR "machine learning" OR "deep learning" OR "learning").
Sources:
A search strategy without a timeframe setting was conducted on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and LILACS.
Study Selection:
The study protocol followed the PRISMA guidelines and the PICO question was formulated according to the aim of the article. The database search led to the selection of 15 articles that were assessed for eligibility in full-text. Finally, 11 systematic reviews met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed according to the risk of bias in systematic reviews (ROBIS) tool.
Conclusions:
AI was not able to identify the various cephalometric landmarks with the same accuracy. Since most of the included studies' conclusions were based on a wrong 2 mm cut-off difference between the AI automatic landmark location and that allocated by human operators, future research should focus on refining the most powerful architectures to improve the clinical relevance of AI-driven automatic cephalometric analysis.
Clinical Significance:
Despite a progressively improved performance, AI has exceeded the recommended magnitude of error for most cephalometric landmarks. Moreover, AI automatic landmarking on 3D CBCT appeared to be less accurate compared to that on 2D X-rays. To date, AI-driven cephalometric landmarking still requires the final supervision of an experienced orthodontist.
