Object detection for caries or pit and fissure sealing requirement in children's first permanent molars

Abstract

Dental caries, a common oral disease, poses serious risks if untreated, necessitating effective preventive measures like pit and fissure sealing. However, the reliance on experienced dentists for pit and fissures or caries detection limits accessibility, potentially leading to missed treatment opportunities, especially among children. To bridge this gap, we leverage deep learning in object detection to develop a method for autonomously identifying caries and determining pit and fissure sealing requirements using smartphone oral photos. We test several detection models and adopt a tiling strategy to reduce information loss during image pre-processing. Our implementation achieves 72.3 mAP.5 with the YOLOXs model and tiling strategy. We enhance accessibility by deploying the pre-trained network as a WeChat applet on mobile devices, enabling in-home detection by parents or guardians. In addition, our data set of children's first permanent molars will also aid in the broader study of pediatric oral disease.