Automatic Detection of Inferior Alveolar Nerve Canal from Cone-Beam Computed Tomography Images for Dental Surgery Planning

Abstract

The inferior alveolar nerve canal is an important nerve canal in the jaw bone, and any damage to this canal can cause pain or fatal complications. Since such damage can be caused by a wrong surgical procedure or surgery plan, accurate surgery planning is necessary. Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) is a three-dimensional medical imaging method that is mainly used in dental treatment; however, identifying the nerve canal is difficult in CBCT images as compared to conventional CT images. This paper proposes a new concept of a panoramic curve for nerve canal detection and a detection algorithm that is usually applied to facial recognition was introduced in this study for the automatic detection of nerve canal in CBCT images.