Dental radiography plays an important role in clinical diagnosis, treatment and making decisions. In recent years, efforts have been made on developing techniques to detect objects in images. The aim of this study was to detect the absence or presence of teeth using an effective convolutional neural network, which reduces calculation times and has success rates greater than 95%. A total of 8000 dental panoramic images were collected. Each image and each tooth was categorized, independently and manually, by two experts with more than three years of experience in general dentistry. The neural network used consists of two main layers: object detection and classification, which is the support of the previous one. A Matterport Mask RCNN was employed in the object detection. A ResNet (Atrous Convolution) was employed in the classification layer. The neural model achieved a total loss of 0.76% (accuracy of 99.24%). The architecture used in the present study returned an almost perfect accuracy in detecting teeth on images from different devices and different pathologies and ages.

Analysis of dental radiographs and images is an important and common part of the diagnostic process in daily clinical practice. During the diagnostic process, the dentist must interpret, among others, tooth numbering. This study is aimed at proposing a convolutional neural network (CNN) that performs this task automatically for panoramic radiographs. A total of 8,000 panoramic images were categorized by two experts with more than three years of experience in general dentistry. The neural network consists of two main layers: object detection and classification, which is the support of the previous one and a transfer learning to improve computing time and precision. A Matterport Mask RCNN was employed in the object detection. A ResNet101 was employed in the classification layer. The neural model achieved a total loss of 6.17% (accuracy of 93.83%). The architecture of the model achieved an accuracy of 99.24% in tooth detection and 93.83% in numbering teeth with different oral health conditions.

To investigate the reliability of panoramic dental images to detect calcified carotid atheroma, electronic databases (PubMed, IEEE/Xplore and Embase) were searched. Outcomes included cerebrovascular disease events, cardiovascular disease events, patient previous diseases, and combined endpoints. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Hence, 15 studies were selected from 507 potential manuscripts. Five studies had a low risk of bias, while the remaining nine studies were found to have a moderate risk. Heterogeneous results were obtained but showed that patients with risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and smoking, and with calcified carotid atheroma on panoramic images, have a higher prevalence than healthy patients. The evidence in the literature was found to be equivocal. However, the findings of this systematic review exhibit that panoramic radiographs can be used for dental diagnosis and treatment planning, as well as to detect calcified carotid artery atheroma.