Advanced AI-driven detection of interproximal caries in bitewing radiographs using YOLOv8

Dental caries is a very common chronic disease that may lead to pain, infection, and tooth loss if its diagnosis at an early stage remains undetected. Traditional methods of tactile-visual examination and bitewing radiography, are subject to intrinsic variability due to factors such as examiner experience and image quality. This variability can result in inconsistent diagnoses. Thus, the present study aimed to develop a deep learning-based AI model using the YOLOv8 algorithm for improving interproximal caries detection in bitewing radiographs. In this retrospective study on 552 radiographs, a total of 1,506 images annotated at Tehran University of Medical Science were processed. The YOLOv8 model was trained and the results were evaluated in terms of precision, recall, and the F1 score, whereby it resulted in a precision of 96.03% for enamel caries and 80.06% for dentin caries, thus showing an overall precision of 84.83%, a recall of 79.77%, and an F1 score of 82.22%. This proves its reliability in reducing false negatives and improving diagnostic accuracy. YOLOv8 enhances interproximal caries detection, offering a reliable tool for dental professionals to improve diagnostic accuracy and clinical outcomes.