A computer-aided automated methodology for the detection and classification of occlusal caries from photographic color images.
The aim of this work is to present a computer-aided automated methodology for the assessment of carious lesions, according to the International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS II), which are located on the occlusal surfaces of posterior permanent teeth from photographic color tooth images. The proposed methodology consists of two stages: (a) the detection of regions of interest and (b) the classification of the detected regions according to ICDAS ΙΙ. In the first stage, pre-processing, segmentation and post-processing mechanisms were employed. For each pixel of the detected regions, a 15×15 neighborhood is used and a set of intensity-based and texture-based features were extracted. A correlation based technique was applied to select a subset of 36 features which were given as input into the classification stage, where five classifiers (J48, Random Tree, Random Forests, Support Vector Machines and Naïve Bayes) were compared to conclude to the best one, in our case, to Random Forests. The methodology was evaluated on a set of 103 digital color images where 425 regions of interest from occlusal surfaces of extracted permanent teeth were manually segmented and classified, based on visual assessments by two experts. The methodology correctly detected 337 out of 340 regions in the detection stage with accuracy of detection 80%. For the classification stage an overall accuracy 83% is achieved. The proposed methodology provides an objective and fully automated caries diagnostic system for occlusal carious lesions with similar or better performance of a trained dentist taking into consideration the available medical knowledge.
Department of Paediatric Dentistry, Dental School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GR 11527, Athens, Greece. Electronic address: elias@paedoclinic.gr.
Elias D
ED
Berdouses
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, GR 15780, Athens, Greece. Electronic address: tzwrtzia.k@gmail.com.
Georgia D
GD
Koutsouri
Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, GR 45110, Ioannina, Greece. Electronic address: etripoliti@gmail.com.
Evanthia E
EE
Tripoliti
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, GR 15780, Athens, Greece. Electronic address: gmatsopoulos@gmail.com.
George K
GK
Matsopoulos
Department of Paediatric Dentistry, Dental School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GR 11527, Athens, Greece. Electronic address: cjoulis@dent.uoa.gr.
Constantine J
CJ
Oulis
Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, GR 45110, Ioannina, Greece. Electronic address: dimitris.fotiadis30@gmail.com.
Dimitrios I
DI
Fotiadis
D003731:Dental Caries / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D023861:Photography, Dental
Caries diagnosis; Classification; Digital imaging; Feature extraction; Feature selection; ICDAS II; Occlusal caries; Random forests; Segmentation