Quantitative assessment of periodontal bone defects

Radiographs are a well-accepted tool in diagnosing periodontal bone lesions and making an accurate evaluation of the treatment. However, the assessment of bone is hampered by the complicated and as it were unpredictable pattern of bone structure. Therefore, and to compensate for the bias always present in human observations, a computer aided procedure was developed to detect and describe periodontal bone lesions. This paper describes a comparison of the performance by human observers and of the computer program. Two series of artificial periodontal bone lesions served as material for the assessments. This study shows that the automated lesion detection program enables an assessment of periodontal bone lesions, which is at least comparable with the results of a group of experienced observers and probably better. It is considerably better than the results of observers individually, and decreases the time-dependent variability appearing in repeated assessments of a single observer. The computer aided detection of periodontal lesions can be considered as a useful and reliable tool in periodontal diagnosis. 9 ref.; 2 figs