Efficacy Of Programmed Software For Caries Detection In Digital Radiography

Objectives:For improvement of diagnosing proximal caries in digital radiography, a software tool programmed by LabVIEW ( National Instruments, USA) was developed. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of the software for proximal caries detection in radiography. Methods:Two dentists were trained to use the developed software. There were 33 proximal surfaces with potential caries to be diagnosed in dental clinic. The adjacent teeth expected to be caries were used as control surfaces. The dentists initially did a visual diagnosis only and then repeated the diagnosis using the designed software. If the final diagnosis was caries, then dental management was performed and the depth of caries was recorded. Results:Effectiveness was evaluated by calculating the sensitivity and specificity of performance in caries detection before and after using the software tool. Sensitivity among dentists before using the software was 69.7% and afterward was 78.8%. An improvement of 9.1% for caries detection was noted. Specificity was 86.1% before using the software and 86% afterward. Conclusions:The developed software could help the dentists to find 9% more cases of caries. To improve the efficacy of the software in caries detection, advent programming and more database collection were needed in the future.