Can artificial intelligence beat humans for dental diagnosis?

The study evaluated agreement between human and AI analyses of a set of 8,767 bitewing and periapical radiographs and found the AI system to be more consistent and accurate at predicting the presence of tooth decay.

It also exposed an unsettling lack of diagnostic consensus among human dentists. While they showed moderate alignment – 79% unanimous agreement – when it came to the absence of decay, the three human dentists unanimously agreed about the presence of decay in only 370 X-rays––just 4.2% of the total.

In nearly one in five instances, even when two dentists identified decay in an X-ray, the third dentist did not. The conspicuous diagnostic variation across such a massive radiographic data set is concerning.