Abstract
IntroductionDigital epidemiology in dental disease screening has a number of advantages which warrant further exploration.AimThis study aimed to test the examination accuracy of digital images to evaluate child oral health by comparing the new method to a gold standard method. It also investigated the levels of diagnostic accuracy between different examiners, including dental care professionals and a lay examiner, when quantifying dental disease using images.MethodsA calibrated dental examiner inspected forty 5-year-olds. In addition, three sets of digital images were taken per child. These images were assessed by six examiners. Sensitivity and specificity of caries diagnosis and inter-examiner reliability were calculated to compare the caries scores derived from examination of the images to those of the gold standard examinations.ResultsThe mean values for sensitivity and specificity scores were 48.0% and 99.1%, respectively. The mean value for kappa showed moderate agreement between 0.43 and 0.73 (0.57). Mean values for agreement using intra-class coefficients were excellent (0.78) and good (0.73) for dt and dmft, respectively. No statistical difference in the validity of the caries scores was shown between the different image assessors.ConclusionsThese data demonstrate the feasibility of using digital images to screen child oral health and for nondental professionals to be recruited to carry out digital epidemiology for the oral health surveillance of children.
Highlights
Digital epidemiology in dental disease screening has a number of advantages which warrant further exploration
There are a variety of dental caries assessment methods used in epidemiological studies to assess levels of dental disease in populations.[2,3,4]
Taking the full arch digital images took up BDJ Open (2021)7:32
Summary
Digital epidemiology in dental disease screening has a number of advantages which warrant further exploration. AIM: This study aimed to test the examination accuracy of digital images to evaluate child oral health by comparing the new method to a gold standard method. It investigated the levels of diagnostic accuracy between different examiners, including dental care professionals and a lay examiner, when quantifying dental disease using images. With changes in technology, the use of digital photography as a valid methodology for screening dental disease in a population has become a possibility.[5,6] As a dental disease screening tool in epidemiology, or for data collection in oral health intervention research trials, it could offer considerable advantages over the standard visual examination. The advantages of digital technology for remote accessing and archiving have been reported in the literature.[5,6,7,8,9,10]
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