It’s unclear whether recruiting large robots for dental procedures like root canals will make visits more pleasant—if anything, it’s easier to imagine many patients canceling their appointments with such a possibility. However, at least one company swears by autonomous machines for dentistry and reportedly tested it on a human volunteer as proof.
Perspicacious, based in Boston, promises that the combination of advanced optical coherence tomography (OCT), artificial intelligence programming and robotics will one day dramatically reduce chairside time for many standard dental treatments. At the same time, they plan to roll out their technology (still in the prototype stages) in underserved communities while offering more accurate health assessments than today’s routine X-ray exams. But if you’re still not sold on the thought of giving your chompers to a drill driven by AI, Perceptive apparently went ahead and lined up one demonstration video—bypassing IRB and FDA approval to show his machine autonomously prepares a patient’s tooth for a dental crown.
According to Perceptive, their machine can already handle the two-hour, two-session process in a single 15-minute session. To achieve this eightfold reduction in time, the company relies on an “easy-to-use, portable intraoral scanner” that uses OCT technology to capture 3D data of a patient’s mouth, including below the tooth surface, below the gum line . and through any residual fluids. Perceptive claims its 3D light-based OCT imaging is 90 percent accurate in detecting cavity formations versus a purported 45 percent accuracy found with current 2D X-ray measurements, while also producing no ionizing radiation in the process.
[Related: What does oil pulling do to your teeth? We asked dentists.]
For what it’s worth, however, experts have long emphasized the safety of dental X-ray imaging techniques. Earlier this year, the American Dental Association (ADA) even updated his instructionsstating that patients often no longer need to wear lead aprons or thyroid collars during modern CT scans.
However, it is Perceptive’s OCT scans that can be fed into AI programming to produce high-resolution scans of a tooth, which it then uses to quickly design a customized approach to preparing it for a dental crown. After consultation with a human dentist, the machine gets to work drilling the exterior within 15 minutes, “even under the heaviest traffic conditions.” according to the website. From there, a real dentist can take over, though Perceptive notes that it hopes to expand its robot’s various tasks down the road.
In a Statement July 30, CEO and founder of Perceptive says he looks forward to “advancing our system and pioneering scalable, fully automated dental healthcare solutions for patients.” Of course, this will require FDA approval that has yet to be obtained before larger trials overseen by regulators can begin. To be fair, robotic systems are already widely used in an ever-increasing number of invasive surgical procedures, so adding dental exams to this list isn’t the most far-fetched idea—and probably surpasses people’s choices just a century ago.
