The MIT alumni-founded Overjet uses artificial intelligence to annotate dental X-rays for dentists. Credit: Courtesy of Overjet
MIT alumni-founded company analyzes and annotates dental X-rays to help dentists offer more comprehensive care.
A hospital radiologist is often pictured as a specialist who sits in a dark room and spends hours poring over X-rays to make diagnoses. Contrast that with your dentist, who in addition to interpreting X-rays must also perform surgery, communicate with patients, manage staff, and run their business. When dentists analyze X-rays, they generally do so in bright rooms and on computers that aren’t specialized for radiology, often with the patient sitting right next to them.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that dentists given the same X-ray might propose different treatments.
“Dentists are doing a great job given all the things they have to deal with,” says Wardah Inam SM ’13, PhD ’16.
Inam is the co-founder of Overjet, an MIT alumni-founded company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze and annotate X-rays for dentists and insurance providers. Overjet’s goal is to take the subjectivity out of X-ray interpretations to improve patient care.
“It’s about moving toward more precision medicine, where we have the right treatments at the right time,” says Inam, who co-founded the company with Alexander Jelicich ’13. “That’s where technology can help. Once we quantify the disease, we can make it very easy to recommend the right treatment.”
Overjet has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to detect and outline cavities and quantify bone levels to aid in the diagnosis of periodontal disease, a common but preventable gum infection that causes the jawbone and other tissues supporting the teeth to deteriorate.
Overjet’s software analyzes and annotates dental X-rays automatically in near real-time, offering information on the type of X-ray taken, how a tooth may be impacted, the exact level of bone loss with color overlays, the location and severity of cavities, and more. Credit: Courtesy of Overjet
Besides helping dentists detect and treat diseases, Overjet’s software is also designed to help dentists show patients the problems they’re seeing and explain why they’re recommending certain treatments.
The company has already analyzed tens of millions of X-rays. They are used by dental practices nationwide and are currently working with insurance companies that represent more than 75 million patients in the U.S. Inam is hoping the data Overjet is analyzing can be used to further streamline operations while improving care for patients.
“Our mission at Overjet is to improve oral health by creating a future that is clinically precise, efficient, and patient-centric,” says Inam.
It’s been a whirlwind journey for Inam, who knew nothing about the dental industry until her interest was piqued after a bad experience in 2018.
Getting to the root …….
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/artificial-intelligence-takes-the-guesswork-out-of-dental-care/