Application of deep machine learning for the radiographic diagnosis of periodontitis

Objective Successful application of deep machine learning could reduce time-consuming and labor-intensive clinical work of calculating the amount of radiographic bone loss (RBL) in diagnosing and treatment planning for periodontitis. This study aimed to test the accuracy of RBL classification by machine learning. Materials and methods A total of 236 patients with standardized full mouth radiographs were included. Each tooth from the periapical films was evaluated by three calibrated periodontists for categorization of RBL and radiographic defect morphology. Each image was pre-processed and augmented to ensure proper data balancing without data pollution, then a novel multitasking InceptionV3 model was applied. Results The model demonstrated an average accuracy of 0.87 ± 0.01 in the categorization of mild (< 15%) or severe (≥ 15%) bone loss with fivefold cross-validation. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive, and negative predictive values of the model were 0.86 ± 0.03, 0.88 ± 0.03, 0.88 ± 0.03, and 0.86 ± 0.02, respectively. Conclusions Application of deep machine learning for the detection of alveolar bone loss yielded promising results in this study. Additional data would be beneficial to enhance model construction and enable better machine learning performance for clinical implementation. Clinical relevance Higher accuracy of radiographic bone loss classification by machine learning can be achieved with more clinical data and proper model construction for valuable clinical application.