Deep Learning for Automatic Image Segmentation in Stomatology and Its Clinical Application

Deep learning has become an active research topic in the field of medical image analysis. In particular, for the automatic segmentation of stomatological images, great advances have been made in segmentation performance. In this paper, we systematically reviewed the recent literature on segmentation methods for stomatological images based on deep learning, and their clinical applications. We categorized them into different tasks and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. The main categories that we explored were the data sources, backbone network, and task formulation. We categorized data sources into panoramic radiography, dental X-rays, cone-beam computed tomography, multi-slice spiral computed tomography, and methods based on intraoral scan images. For the backbone network, we distinguished methods based on convolutional neural networks from those based on transformers. We divided task formulations into semantic segmentation tasks and instance segmentation tasks. Toward the end of the paper, we discussed the challenges and provide several directions for further research on the automatic segmentation of stomatological images.