Performance of deep learning object detection technology in the detection and diagnosis of maxillary sinus lesions on panoramic radiographs

Objective: The first aim of this study was to determine the performance of a deep learning object detection technique in the detection of maxillary sinuses on panoramic radiographs. The second aim was to clarify the performance in the classification of maxillary sinus lesions compared with healthy maxillary sinuses. Methods: The imaging data for healthy maxillary sinuses (587 sinuses, Class 0), inflamed maxillary sinuses (416 sinuses, Class 1), cysts of maxillary sinus regions (171 sinuses, Class 2) were assigned to training, testing 1, and testing 2 data sets. A learning process of 1000 epochs with the training images and labels was performed using DetectNet, and a learning model was created. The testing 1 and testing 2 images were applied to the model, and the detection sensitivities and the false-positive rates per image were calculated. The accuracies, sensitivities and specificities were determined for distinguishing the inflammation group (Class 1) and cyst group (Class 2) with respect to the healthy group (Class 0). Results: Detection sensitivities of healthy (Class 0) and inflamed (Class 1) maxillary sinuses were 100% for both testing 1 and testing 2 data sets, whereas they were 98 and 89% for cysts of the maxillary sinus regions (Class 2). False-positive rates per image were nearly 0.00. Accuracies, sensitivities and specificities for diagnosis maxillary sinusitis were 90-91%, 88-85%, and 91-96%, respectively; for cysts of the maxillary sinus regions, these values were 97-100%, 80-100%, and 100-100%, respectively. Conclusion: Deep learning could reliably detect the maxillary sinuses and identify maxillary sinusitis and cysts of the maxillary sinus regions. Advances in knowledge: This study using a deep leaning object detection technique indicated that the detection sensitivities of maxillary sinuses were high and the performance of maxillary sinus lesion identification was >= 80%. In particular, performance of sinusitis identification was >= 90%.

Automated summary

The study aimed to evaluate the performance of a deep learning object detection technique in detecting maxillary sinuses on panoramic radiographs and classifying maxillary sinus lesions. The results showed high detection sensitivities for healthy and inflamed maxillary sinuses, and slightly lower sensitivities for cysts of the maxillary sinus regions. The deep learning technique demonstrated reliable detection of maxillary sinuses and identification of sinusitis and cysts with accuracies ranging from 80% to 100%.