Assessing an AI-driven remote monitoring system for reliable clinical photo acquisition and patient usability.

Background: This study aimed to evaluate the validity and usability of DentalMonitoring (DM), an Artificial Intelligence Driven Remote Monitoring (AIDRM) system, in providing standardized, high-quality photo sets that are clinically suitable for the visual assessment of various clinical parameters.

Methods: Two independent prospective multi-centric investigations were conducted: The first, a usability investigation, included 63 patients from five sites in the United States. Its goal was to evaluate the usability of DM across four age groups, including individuals with physical disabilities. Patients provided subjective feedback through a questionnaire, while healthcare professionals conducted an objective evaluation of task performance. The second, a validity investigation, involved 104 patients from five other sites in the United States. This study aimed to compare the visual assessment of DM picture sets against the gold standard of standardized live assessments conducted by the same dental expert. Five clinical parameters per arch were evaluated, resulting in a total of 1,040 visual assessment parameters.

Results: In the usability investigation, most patients were able to achieve the steps with relative ease with no significant differences between types of participants. In the validity investigation, the global agreement between the two evaluations for the 1040 results generated for the five clinical parameters pooled was 98.9%.

Conclusions: The study found that DM was user-friendly for all participants and that the photosets produced by the DM scans were substantially equivalent to the clinical live assessments conducted by dental experts. This suggests that DM is a highly reliable AIDRM tool, allowing healthcare professionals and patients to consistently produce high-quality image sets without requiring assistance or prior experience. This achievement opens the door to a new paradigm in orthodontic patient follow-up and may bring new dental prevention and treatment follow-up strategies.