For the first time, an autonomous AI-controlled robot has performed an entire dental procedure on a human, completing the task eight times faster than a human dentist.
The system, made by the Boston-based company Perceptive, uses a hand-held volumetric 3D scanner, which builds a detailed XNUMXD model of the mouth, including the teeth, gums and even the nerves beneath the tooth's surface, using optical tomography coherence or OCT from optical coherence tomography.
This excludes harmful X-ray radiation from the process, as OCT uses nothing more than beams of light to create its volumetric models, which are output in high resolution, with cavities automatically detected with an accuracy rate of around 90%.
At this point, the (human) dentist and patient can discuss what needs to be done – but once those decisions are made, the robotic dentist takes over. He plans the operation and then goes ahead and does it.
The first specialty of the machine: preparing a tooth for a dental crown.
Perceptive he argues that this is generally a two-hour procedure that dentists normally perform in two visits.
The robo-dentist does it in 15 minutes.
Here is a time-lapse video.
The robot has not yet been approved by the FDA, and Perceptive has not set a timetable for the release of the new technology.
