Primary Methods and Algorithms in Artificial-Intelligence-Based Dental Image Analysis: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has garnered significant attention in recent years for its potential to revolutionize healthcare, including dentistry. However, despite the growing body of literature on AI-based dental image analysis, challenges such as the integration of AI into clinical workflows, variability in dataset quality, and the lack of standardized evaluation metrics remain largely underexplored. This systematic review aims to address these gaps by assessing the extent to which AI technologies have been integrated into dental specialties, with a specific focus on their applications in dental imaging. A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted, selecting relevant studies through electronic searches from Scopus, Google Scholar, and PubMed databases, covering publications from 2018 to 2023. A total of 52 articles were systematically analyzed to evaluate the diverse approaches of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) in dental imaging. This review reveals that AI has become increasingly prevalent, with researchers predominantly employing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for detection and diagnosis tasks. Pretrained networks demonstrate strong performance in many scenarios, while ML techniques have shown growing utility in estimation and classification. Key challenges identified include the need for larger, annotated datasets and the translation of research outcomes into clinical practice. The findings underscore AI’s potential to significantly advance diagnostic support, particularly for non-specialist dentists, improving patient care and clinical efficiency. AI-driven software can enhance diagnostic accuracy, facilitate data sharing, and support collaboration among dental professionals. Future developments are anticipated to enable patient-specific optimization of restoration designs and implant placements, leveraging personalized data such as dental history, tissue type, and bone thickness to achieve better outcomes.