Detecting the presence of supernumerary teeth during the early mixed dentition stage using deep learning algorithms: A pilot study

Background: Supernumerary teeth are a common anomaly and are frequently observed in paediatric patients. To prevent or minimize complications, early diagnosis and treatment is ideal in children with supernumerary teeth. Aim: This study aimed to apply convolutional neural network (CNN)–based deep learning to detect the presence of supernumerary teeth in children during the early mixed dentition stage. Design: Three CNN models, AlexNet, VGG16-TL, and InceptionV3-TL, were employed in this study. A total of 220 panoramic radiographs (from children aged 6 years 0 months to 9 years 6 months) including supernumerary teeth (cases, n = 120) or no anomalies (controls, n = 100) were retrospectively analyzed. The CNN performances were assessed according to accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, and area under the ROC curves for a cross-validation test dataset. Results: The VGG16-TL model had the highest performance according to accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the ROC curve, but the other models had similar performance. Conclusion: CNN-based deep learning is a promising approach for detecting the presence of supernumerary teeth during the early mixed dentition stage.