• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.52-58
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• 2015

The automated dental cavity detection program for a new concept intra-oral dental x-ray imaging device, an auxiliary diagnosis system, which is able to assist a dentist to identify dental caries in an early stage and to make an accurate diagnosis, was to be developed. The primary theory of the automatic dental cavity detection program is divided into two algorithms; one is an image segmentation skill to discriminate between a dental cavity and a normal tooth and the other is a computational method to analyze feature of an tooth image and take an advantage of it for detection of dental cavities. In the present study, it is, first, evaluated how accurately the DRLSE (Direct Regularized Level Set Evolution) method extracts demarcation surrounding the dental cavity. In order to evaluate the ability of the developed algorithm to automatically detect dental cavities, 7 tooth phantoms from incisor to molar were fabricated which contained a various form of cavities. Then, dental cavities in the tooth phantom images were analyzed with the developed algorithm. Except for two cavities whose contours were identified partially, the contours of 12 cavities were correctly discriminated by the automated dental caries detection program, which, consequently, proved the practical feasibility of the automatic dental lesion detection algorithm. However, an efficient and enhanced algorithm is required for its application to the actual dental diagnosis since shapes or conditions of the dental caries are different between individuals and complicated. In the future, the automatic dental cavity detection system will be improved adding pattern recognition or machine learning based algorithm which can deal with information of tooth status.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.8
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• pp.1424-1429
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• 2016

Segmentation is one of the first steps in most diagnosis systems for characterization of dental caries in an early stage. The purpose of automatic dental cavity detection system is helping dentist to make more precise diagnosis. We proposed the semi-automatic method for the segmentation of dental caries on digital x-ray images. Based on a manually and roughly selected ROI (Region of Interest), it calculated the contour for the dental cavity. A snake algorithm which is one of active contour models repetitively refined the initial contour and self-examination and correction on the segmentation result. Seven phantom tooth from incisor to molar were made for the evaluation of the developed algorithm. They contained a different form of cavities and each phantom tooth has two dental cavities. From 14 dental cavities, twelve cavities were accurately detected including small cavities. And two cavities were segmented partly. It demonstrates the practical feasibility of the dental lesion detection using Computer-aided Detection (CADe).

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.67 no.12
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• pp.1678-1684
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• 2018

Dental caries is one of the most popular oral disease. The aim of automatic dental cavity detection system is helping dentist to make accurate diagnosis. It is very important to separate cavity from the teeth in the detection system. In this paper, We compared two active contour algorithms, Snake and DRLSE(Distance Regularized Level Set Evolution). To improve performance, image is selected ROI(region of interest), then applied bilateral filter, Canny edge. In order to evaluate the algorithms, we applied to 7 tooth phantoms from incisor to molar. Each teeth contains two cavities of different shape. As a result, Snake is faster than DRLSE, but Snake has limitation to compute topology of objects. DRLSE is slower but those of performance is better.