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Tip #148 – Imaging: AI Revolutionizing Diagnosis and Image Recognition with Dr. Martin Gale
Hosted by @dr.haydynbathurst
Hello everyone and welcome again to “What I wish I knew”, the dental headstart series where we give you little tips and tricks to help you get ahead in dentistry.
In this episode today I am talking with specialist endodontist Dr Martin Gale. As new general dentists, patients come to us with often complex problems, and we are sometimes under a lot of stress to find the correct diagnosis. If we can’t figure it out, and particularly if the patient is in pain, then referral to our local endodontist is the next step. We just hope that they can make that correct diagnosis and solve the problem. But what if we have not made the right decision to refer, and in fact our patient does not need to see an endodontist. This may waste the patient’s and the endodontist’s time. Or perhaps of more concern, we decide not to refer a patient, and they then don’t get their disease treated! Is there any way we can get some help to make the right decision, on
deciding the diagnosis, and on whether to refer a patient?
I had the pleasure of seeing one of Dr Martin Gale’s lectures on dental artificial intelligence last year, and it seems that AI might be a possible help for making those
difficult diagnostic decisions. We’ve discussed AI on the podcast before but this technology is rapidly changing, so it’s due for another episode. And Dr Gale is the man when it comes to implementation of AI into dentistry, in particular into endodontics. He has been researching dental AI since 2005 and has developed a working app for endodontic diagnosis since 2017. In this first episode, he’ll take us through the development of AI and its practical uses in dentistry, including in endodontics. In the second episode (coming soon) we will explore the responsibility dentists have in implementing this powerful technology, and raise awareness about how AI may disrupt the dental industry in the coming decades. I think you’ll enjoy it!
Key moments
0:04:31 First medical AI software developed in 1972
0:08:14 Explanation of convolutional neural networks (CNN)
0:11:14 Introduction of transformers by Google in 2017
0:15:36 Discussion on image recognition in dental radiographs
0:21:31 Dr. Martin Gale’s personal research on endodontic AI diagnosis 0:26:51 Reveal of his neural network’s 94-95% accuracy rate
0:29:35 Importance of accurate data collection in diagnostics
0:34:58 Explanation of AI’s real market (large organizations, insurers) vs individual dentists These timestamps highlight the progression of the discussion from AI’s history to its specific applications in dentistry.