Development of a diagnostic system that predicts the remaining period of pre-emergent eruption of lower second molars using a panoramic radiograph

Supporting systems for diagnosis and/or treatment planning in medical/dental area have been one of the applications of information technologies highly demanded in society. In orthodontics, it is very helpful in making treatment plans for orthodontists to know when second molars of each patient erupt. In this study, a system for prediction of the remaining period of pre-emergent eruption of lower second molars was developed, using the panoramic radiographs that were commonly available to most of the dentists and taken from patients frequently as compared with other type of radiographs. The knowledge descriptions and the system architecture were determined on the basis of expertise knowledge and experience. The system was successfully optimized to demonstrate the prediction accuracy of 71.1% with improvements of more than 30% relative to the judgment results of the expert orthodontists when tolerance level of prediction error was ±6 months. The robust nature of prediction performance of the present system was verified from the technical and clinical viewpoints.