AI: The Tooth Fairy’s New Best Friend
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — We’re all too familiar with the fear of a robot apocalypse, but what if I told you artificial intelligence could also be your dental savior?
That’s right, folks, more and more dentists are embracing AI to improve accuracy and results. Talk about a bright, shiny future for our pearly whites.
Smile Like You Mean It
For dental patient Tayla Fernandez, a professional model, her smile is her bread and butter. At Bedford Dental Group in Beverly Hills, her x-rays looked pretty clean, but Dr. Daniel Naysan decided to run it through an AI program called ‘Second Opinion.’ Surprise, surprise: it revealed tiny areas of decay.
Fernandez was able to see a scan of her entire mouth. Naysan admits that even highly-trained professionals can miss things. As he put it, “there’s human error.”
A Dental Game-Changer
The ‘Second Opinion’ detection system received FDA approval last year for widespread use in dental offices. It turns out that humans can only see 30 to 40 shades of gray, while computers can detect around a thousand different shades. As Pearl CEO Ophir Tanz points out, this means surfacing about 37% more disease on average and increasing case acceptance by over 30% on average as well.
Naysan revealed that patient acceptance for treatment is much higher now with the system than it has ever been before.
The Future of Dental Care
The American Dental Association chimed in with a statement, saying that “AI predictive models could assist in the monitoring, progression, or treatments of gum disease; the need for preventative restorations; and identifying fractured dental implants.”
While the late physicist Stephen Hawking warned that AI could someday replace people, Tanz believes AI working side-by-side with humans is the best of both worlds. “That is statistically how you get the optimal results,”he said.
Fernandez will be back in six months to keep an eye on her potential cavities. “Being able to detect things before they can become a problem. I think it is the future,”she said.
So next time you’re dreading a visit to the dentist, remember that AI might just be the superhero in the chair beside you, saving your teeth from the clutches of decay.
