Assessment of the Object Detection Ability of Interproximal Caries on Primary Teeth in Periapical Radiographs Using Deep Learning Algorithms

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of a model using You Only Look Once (YOLO) for object detection of proximal caries in periapical radiographs of children. A total of 2016 periapical radiographs in primary dentition were selected from the M6 database as a learning material group, of which 1143 were labeled as proximal caries by an experienced dentist using an annotation tool. After converting the annotations into a training dataset, YOLO was trained on the dataset using a single convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Accuracy, recall, specificity, precision, negative predictive value (NPV), F1-score, Precision-Recall curve, and AP (area under curve) were calculated for evaluation of the object detection model’s performance in the 187 test datasets. The results showed that the CNN-based object detection model performed well in detecting proximal caries, with a diagnostic accuracy of 0.95, a recall of 0.94, a specificity of 0.97, a precision of 0.82, a NPV of 0.96, and an F1-score of 0.81. The AP was 0.83. This model could be a valuable tool for dentists in detecting carious lesions in periapical radiographs.