Precision Oral Medicine: A DPR Segmentation and Transfer Learning Approach for Detecting Third Molar Compress Inferior Alveolar Nerve

Extraction of the third molar of the mandible is one of the most common oral surgical procedures. Preoperative monitoring and assessment are crucial to mitigate neurological risks. Identifying whether the third molar in the mandible compresses the inferior alveolar nerve still relies on dental professionals, a task that is repetitive and time-consuming. Thus, the primary objective is to utilize dental panoramic radiography for image processing and classify whether the third molar compresses the inferior alveolar nerve, aiming to reduce the demand for CT images in symptom diagnosis and mitigate the risks associated with high-dose radiation. This study proposes an innovative dental panoramic radiography segmentation technique to locate the third molar position. Subsequently, an innovative edge masking enhancement method is used to extract features of the inferior alveolar nerve and the third molar. Moreover, a transformer-based image detection model to consider whether the third molar compresses the inferior alveolar nerve. The third molar position localization method achieved an accuracy rate of 97.92%, compared to recent research at least improved by 3.6% accuracy. Subsequently, innovative edge masking and image enhancement methods improve classification accuracy by 4.3%, when supplemented with computed tomography scan images for further evaluation, the maximum accuracy reached 98.45%, representing a 4.5% improvement compared to previous studies. The third molar position detection results will impact the identification of the inferior alveolar nerve compressed by the third molar. Through the innovative edge region segmentation algorithm can effectively distinguish this object, and the overall evaluation accuracy can be improved by approximately 3.8%.