The Development of a Smart Electronic Cervical Headgear to Record Time of Dental Patients Log

The efficacy of treatment with removable orthodontic appliances depends to a large extent on the length of time that patients use them. Orthodontists often observe a difference between the time of appliance usage claimed by patients and the actual clinical results. To address the inconsistency in patients’ self-reported usage data, microsensors are used. In this study, we developed a low-power integrated system that functions as an intelligent cervical headgear (HG), capable of recording temperature and movement position at customizable intervals and storing these collected data in a memory device. In this study, we used the output data from sensors and the proposed algorithm to determine the duration of orthodontic appliance usage. The results were then stored as encoded records of zeros and ones in a low-power, nonvolatile memory that allows for read and write operations. Using clinical results obtained from ten smart cervical HGs used by orthodontic patients, over a period of ten months, an average accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of 89.5%, 92.5%, 89.1%, 90.3%, and 88.7% were achieved, respectively (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${P} \lt 0.05$ </tex-math></inline-formula>). Furthermore, the integration of temperature and motion data enhances the reliability in determining the duration of orthodontic appliance worn by the patient. These findings underscore the effective functionality of the smart cervical HG in accurately recording and identifying the correct duration of orthodontic appliance usage by patients. This device enables more precise prediction treatment duration and facilitates the selection of alternative treatment plans based on patient cooperation and documented evidence.