Automated cortical thickness measurement of the mandibular condyle head on CBCT images using a deep learning method

This study proposes a deep learning model for cortical bone segmentation in the mandibular condyle head using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and an automated method for measuring cortical thickness with a color display based on the segmentation results. In total, 12,800 CBCT images from 25 normal subjects, manually labeled by an oral radiologist, served as the gold-standard. The segmentation model combined a modified U-Net and a convolutional neural network for target region classification. Model performance was evaluated using intersection over union (IoU) and the Hausdorff distance in comparison with the gold standard. The second automated model measured the cortical thickness based on a three-dimensional (3D) model rendered from the segmentation results and presented a color visualization of the measurements. The IoU and Hausdorff distance showed high accuracy (0.870 and 0.928 for marrow bone and 0.734 and 1.247 for cortical bone, respectively). A visual comparison of the 3D color maps showed a similar trend to the gold standard. This algorithm for automatic segmentation of the mandibular condyle head and visualization of the measured cortical thickness as a 3D-rendered model with a color map may contribute to the automated quantification of bone thickness changes of the temporomandibular joint complex on CBCT.