Clinical Applications of Low-Dose Dental Cone-Beam Computed Tomography

Low-dose dental cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) is a practical and cost-effective alternative to clinical multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) for dental imaging. However, the cost-effectiveness-related device optimization and low radiation dose in dental CBCT make the corresponding inverse problem ill-posed rather than that of the conventional MDCT imaging. Therefore, there is great interest in obtaining high-quality CBCT images while overcoming the severe ill-posedness. Along with cutting-edge deep learning (DL) techniques, significant advances have been made in dental CBCT image reconstruction and downstream clinical applications. This chapter offers a comprehensive review of various DL techniques for metal-induced artifact reduction and downstream applications and discusses their limitations and future research directions with respect to practical diagnosis and treatment tasks in dental clinics. This chapter also discusses digital dentistry applications such as 3D jaw–teeth–face model-based postoperative prediction and cephalometric landmarking, in which sophisticated maxillofacial imaging is a crucial component.