{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,16]],"date-time":"2026-09-16T19:24:42Z","timestamp":1789586682751,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":41,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]],"date-time":"2026-04-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1776038400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan University Development Foundation","award":["02026004007234"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["02026004007234"]}]},{"award":["02026004007234"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["02026004007234"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0468j1635","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Diagnostics"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Objectives: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of a YOLOv8x-based deep learning model for detecting approximal, occlusal and buccal caries on paediatric panoramic radiographs and to compare its performance with human observers with different levels of clinical experience. Methods: A total of 1526 panoramic radiographs obtained from children aged 5\u201312 years were retrospectively analysed. Approximal, occlusal, and buccal caries in primary molars were annotated and used to train a YOLOv8x object-detection model. Model performance was evaluated on an independent test set and compared with three human observers: an intern dentist (ID), a novice specialist student (NSS), and an experienced specialist student (ESS). Diagnostic performance was assessed using precision, sensitivity, F1 score, and true positive counts. Results: The YOLOv8x model demonstrated moderate performance in detecting approximal caries (F1 score: 0.576) but showed limited performance for occlusal caries (F1 score: 0.24) and failed to detect buccal caries. The AI model showed lesion-dependent performance. For approximal caries, it performed comparably to ESS observers (p &gt; 0.05) and better than ID (p &lt; 0.001). Performance was poor for buccal caries (p &lt; 0.001), and intermediate for occlusal caries, with no difference from NSS or ESS (p &gt; 0.05) but lower than ID (p &lt; 0.001). Overall, performance was comparable to experienced observers (p &gt; 0.05) and superior to less experienced observers (p &lt; 0.001). Conclusions: The YOLOv8x model achieved diagnostic performance comparable to less experienced clinicians in detecting dental caries on paediatric panoramic radiographs but did not reach expert-level accuracy. These findings suggest that deep learning models may serve as supportive tools in panoramic caries assessment rather than replacements for expert interpretation.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/diagnostics16081150","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]],"date-time":"2026-04-13T10:19:14Z","timestamp":1776075554000},"page":"1150","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Deep Learning-Based Dental Caries Diagnosis on Panoramic Radiographies: Performance of YOLOv8 Versus Human Observers"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-5896-3056","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Kader","family":"Bi\u00e7engil","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Hospitadent Dental Hospital, Istanbul 34893, T\u00fcrkiye"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ay\u00e7a","family":"Kurt","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Pedodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Rize 53020, T\u00fcrkiye"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2444-4322","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Muhammed Enes","family":"Naralan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Oral and Dentomaxillofacial Radiology, Faculty of Dentistry, Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Rize 53020, T\u00fcrkiye"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"\u0130rem","family":"Okumu\u015f","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Pedodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Rize 53020, T\u00fcrkiye"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"69","DOI":"10.1177\/154405910808700112","article-title":"Trajectory patterns of dental caries experience in the permanent dentition to the fourth decade of life","volume":"87","author":"Broadbent","year":"2008","journal-title":"J. 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