Hey, this is Doctor Chad Duplantis, and I'm a restorative dentist here in Fort Worth, Texas, and today I'd like to talk with you a little bit about artificial intelligence and specifically its role in dentistry. Over the past few months, we've definitely heard a lot about artificial intelligence through social media and just its role in society. We know that a number of companies are incorporating artificial intelligence to take over duties that humans once performed within that organization.

You know, some of us see it as a detriment, others see it as a great benefit to society, but in dentistry, I can tell you it's incredibly beneficial to our diagnostic workflows as well as our patient education portfolio that we have in our practices. 

Recently, two companies that I'm very fond of, Pearl AI and Curve Dental, have joined forces and they've created a platform to where, through your practice management software, if you're a Curve Dental user, you can very easily obtain the artificial intelligence second opinions of your dental radiographs. 

So what I'd like to do is walk you through a case that came into my practice recently. This is a young lady, she was 14 years old. This is actually the very first patient that we utilized AI in front of the patient on. So this was our first or second day of having it.

She came in from the pediatric dentist. We didn't have any radiographs from the pediatric dentist. Chief complaint was that, you know, mom said that the pediatric dentist told her that she needed a silver crown on her molar. And so, as we all know, Mama Bear is usually not too happy when their baby's going to get a silver crown or a stainless steel crown – a permanent tooth. You know, much less a baby tooth as well. 

So, the patient presented, she had a broken distobucal cusp on tooth number 30. And we took this one radiograph just to evaluate the area that was of concern. So once we took the radiograph you know we look at it in our Curve software, and this is the way that it presents to us in our Curve software. And, you know, I start talking to you know mom and the child and I'm sharing the various lesions that I see, and I'm trying to have a conversation with mom and the child regarding, you know, is it something that we treat? Does it go far enough or penetrate the enamel enough to where it's going to be detrimental to the dentin and continue growing? Or is it something that we can re-mineralized? 

And as we all know, showing a patient a radiograph, although it's effective, it's really not that effective of an educational tool. So, as we go through this radiograph you notice this little button down at the bottom right here, and that button is, let me go back to it for a second here, that button is the second opinion button. And that's the button that takes us directly into Pearl’s software, and we can view it with or without AI. 

And so when I bring it into the software I have the AI viewer turned off, and you know, this is a great place to present from. I'm once again showing mom an expanded view of, of, you know, seven teeth here. And I'm talking about all of these various lesions, and I'm walking through it, I click one button and I turn on the AI, and you'll see that these lesions pop up in a really bright and vibrant pink, and so we can really easily share with mom and the patient all these areas of concern. And as we hover over these various lesions, we're going to see whether they are entirely in the enamel or as in this distal pit on tooth number three, it's into the denton, as is the mesial lesion and so on and so forth. 

So we walk through each one of these pickups from the artificial intelligence software. And we're explaining to mom whether this is something that we are going to treat or something that we're going to attempt to mineralize. I'd like to stress to you that artificial intelligence is so incredible, but it truly is a second opinion.

You're going to agree with it the majority of the time. And there's going to be times that you disagree with it. It's going to find things that you didn't find, and you're going to also find things that the artificial intelligence didn't find either. 

In addition to caries, we can, you know, the artificial intelligence will pick up various other forms of pathology. It will pick up calculus, it will pick up notable margins or failing margins on restorations. It will measure, as you can see here, the distance between the CEJ and the bony crest. So we'll be able to really utilize this, from a periodontal perspective as well. There's numerous indications and numerous situations or conditions that can be read through the AI, interpreting the dental radiographs.

I think it's been a great addition to my practice. You know, once I had it, I certainly don't want to let it go. I really, I really have enjoyed utilizing this in our practice, and it's a great educational tool. We'll never dismiss the power of a keen eye in a clinical examination, because we have to correlate these findings with our clinical exam findings as well.

But this has been a just, just fantastic addition. And in my opinion, it's a great merger of two really cutting edge companies in dentistry. And I hope that you look into both of these softwares and, you know, hopefully the collaboration between the two to benefit your diagnostic capabilities as well. Thank you very much.