Machine learning in dentistry and oral surgery: charting the course with bibliometric insights.

BACKGROUND

We aimed to comprehensively analyze the application of machine learning (ML) in dentistry and oral surgery using bibliometric methods to identify research trends, hotspots, and future directions.

METHODS

Publications related to ML in dentistry and oral surgery published between 2010 and 2024 were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded by the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). A total of 2234 unique publications were identified after screening. Bibliometric analysis was performed using the VOSviewer and CiteSpace software, focusing on parameters such as the number of publications, countries, institutions, journals, co-cited references, and keyword bursts.

RESULTS

The number of publications increased significantly from 2018 to 2024. China and the United States were the leading countries in terms of number of publications and citation counts. Prominent institutions include Seoul National University, Sichuan University, and Charite Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Journals such as BMC Oral Health and the Journal of Dentistry have a large number of publications. Analysis of the co-cited references revealed clusters related to disease diagnosis and risk prediction, treatment planning, clinical decision support systems, and dental education. Keyword bursts indicate the evolution of research focus from traditional machine learning algorithms to deep learning algorithms and the emerging importance of multimodal data and foundation models.

CONCLUSION

ML has made remarkable progress in dentistry and oral surgery. Although clinicians can benefit from the application of ML models in their practice, they should conduct comprehensive clinical validations to ensure the accuracy and reliability of these models. Moreover, challenges, such as data availability and security, algorithmic biases, and "black-box models", must be addressed. Future research should focus on integrating multimodal data and leveraging foundation models to improve the accuracy of diagnosis, treatment planning, and educational tools in dentistry and oral surgery.