Automated Detection of Dental Caries from Oral Images using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

The urgent demand for accurate and efficient diagnostic methods to combat oral diseases, particularly dental caries, has led to the exploration of advanced techniques. Dental caries, caused by bacterial activities that weaken tooth enamel, can result in severe cavities and infections if not promptly treated. Despite existing imaging techniques, consistent and early diagnoses remain challenging. Traditional approaches, such as visual and tactile examinations, are prone to variations in expertise, necessitating more objective diagnostic tools. This study leverages deep learning to propose an explainable methodology for automated dental caries detection in images. Utilizing pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) including VGG-16, VGG-19, DenseNet-121, and Inception V3, we investigate different models and preprocessing techniques, such as histogram equalization and Sobel edge detection, to enhance the detection process. Our comprehensive experiments on a dataset of 884 oral images demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach in achieving accurate caries detection. Notably, the VGG-16 model achieves the best accuracy of 98.3% using the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) optimizer with Nesterov's momentum. This research contributes to the field by introducing an interpretable deep learning-based solution for automated dental caries detection, enhancing diagnostic accuracy, and offering potential insights for dental health assessment.