Assessment of deep convolutional neural network models for mandibular fracture detection in panoramic radiographs

The aim of this study was to develop automated models for the identification and detection of mandibular fractures in panoramic radiographs using convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithms. A total of 1710 panoramic radiograph images from the years 2016 to 2020, including 855 images containing mandibular fractures, were obtained retrospectively from the regional trauma centre. CNN-based classification models, DenseNet-169 and ResNet-50, were fabricated to identify fractures in the radiographic images. The CNN-based object detection models Faster R-CNN and YOLOv5 were trained to automate the placement of the bounding boxes to detect fractures in the radiographic images. The performance of the models was evaluated on a hold-out test set and also by comparison with residents in oral and maxillofacial surgery and oral and maxillofacial surgeons (experts) on a 100-image subset. The binary classification performance of the models achieved promising results with an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity of 100%. The detection performance of the models achieved an AUC of approximately 90%. When compared with the accuracy of clinician observers, the identification performance of the models outperformed even an expert-level classification. In conclusion, CNN-based models identified mandibular fractures above expert-level performance. It is expected that these models will be used as an aid to improve clinician performance, with aided resident performance approximating that of expert level.