Evaluation of a machine learning algorithm for predicting the dental age of adolescent based on different preprocessing methods

Abstract

Abstract Background Machine learning (ML) algorithms play a key role in estimating dental age. In this study, three ML models were used for dental age estimation, based on different preprocessing methods. Aim The 7 mandibular teeth on the digital panorama were measured and evaluated according to the Cameriere and the Demirjian method, respectively. Correlation data were used for decision tree (DT), Bayesian ridge regression (BRR), k-nearest neighbors (KNN) models for dental age estimation. An accuracy comparison was made among different methods. Subjects & Methods We analyzed 748 orthopantomographs (392 males and 356 females) from eastern China between the age of 5 and 13 years in this retrospective study. Three models, DT, BRR, and KNN, were used to estimate the dental age. The data in ML is obtained according to the Cameriere method and the Demirjian method. Coefficient of determination (R2), mean error (ME), root mean square error (RMSE), mean square error (MSE) and mean absolute error (MAE), the above five metrics were used to evaluate the accuracy of age estimation. Results Our experimental results showed that the prediction accuracy of dental age was affected by ML algorithms. MD, MAD, MSE, RMSE of the dental age predicted by ML were significantly decreased. Among all the methods, the KNN model based on the Cameriere method had the highest accuracy (ME = 0.015, MAE = 0.473, MSE = 0.340, RMSE = 0.583, R2 = 0.94). Conclusions The results show that the prediction accuracy of dental age is influenced by ML algorithms and preprocessing method. The KNN model based on the Cameriere method was able to infer dental age more accurately in a clinical setting.