Radiographic Assessment of Dental Diseases in Pediatric Dentistry: Applications for Early Diagnosis and Preventive Care
Pediatric dentistry, Panoramic radiography, Dental diseases, Early diagnosis, Preventive care
AuthorsAbstractDental diseases are among the most common chronic conditions affecting children, making early diagnosis essential for preventing disease progression and preserving oral health. Panoramic radiography provides comprehensive visualization of the developing dentition and serves as an important diagnostic tool for identifying dental abnormalities that may not be evident during routine clinical examination. This study evaluated the radiographic characteristics and distribution of dental diseases in pediatric panoramic radiographs and examined the role of radiographic assessment in supporting early diagnosis and preventive care. A retrospective observational study was conducted using a publicly available dataset comprising 73 pediatric panoramic radiographs (49 training and 24 testing images) with corresponding YOLO annotation files. Radiographic lesions were analyzed according to lesion frequency, anatomical distribution, and lesion burden per radiograph using Python-based statistical analysis. A total of 314 annotated dental lesions were identified, with a mean lesion burden of 4.30 ± 3.34 lesions per radiograph. Lesion counts ranged from 1 to 16, and approximately 65% of all annotated lesions were in the mandibular regions. The findings demonstrate that panoramic radiography is an effective modality for detecting multiple dental abnormalities and facilitating comprehensive radiographic assessment in pediatric patients. Furthermore, standardized annotated radiographic datasets provide a valuable foundation for the development of artificial intelligence-assisted diagnostic systems, supporting earlier diagnosis, preventive interventions, and evidence-based clinical decision-making in pediatric dentistry.
Received-16-05-2026 Revised-20-06-2026 Accepted-23-06-2026
1. Introduction Oral health is an integral part of children's health, and oral diseases, including dental caries, developmental anomalies, eruption disturbances and periapical pathologies, are among the most prevalent chronic diseases in children globally. When undetected, these conditions can cause problems with chewing, speech development and the growth of the face, as well as risk of pain, infection, and early tooth loss, and affect quality of life. It is therefore important to identify such pathological changes early on so that interventions could be started at the right time and the disease could be prevented from progressing further. This has been a major shift in preventive dentistry in recent years, focusing on personalised diagnostic approaches to detect dental lesions at an early stage before irreversible structural changes occur, to promote long-term oral health outcomes (Abdelaziz, 2023; Cameron & Widmer, 2021). The use of radiographic imaging has become an invaluable diagnostic resource in the practice of pediatric dentistry as many dental disease processes can only be properly diagnosed with the aid of such imaging. The panoramic view is great for examining both the maxillary and mandibular arches and can give the clinician a view of tooth development and eruption patterns, carious lesions, periapical pathology, impacted teeth, and ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
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