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How AI Is Going to Change Your Dental Diagnostics Now
Artificial intelligence is transforming dental care, moving beyond X-rays to enhance everyday diagnostics. From detecting plaque and tooth wear to streamlining patient communication, new 3Shape AI tools are redefining the dental checkup.
Take a minute to read my latest post on how innovations like 3Shape’s TRIOS 6, TRIOS Dx Plus software and our patient mobile app will help dentists improve accuracy, efficiency, and patient engagement.
For more than twenty years, the healthcare industry has been leveraging artificial intelligence. From processing data to forecasting patient admissions and optimizing hospital beds, staff, and equipment, AI is helping to drive efficiency for healthcare professionals.
Over the last few years, we have seen AI being used more and more for diagnostic purposes. Every week, a new AI tool is launched that can analyze X-rays or help diagnose a clinical issue; innovations that are revolutionizing healthcare.
Likewise, in dentistry, AI application use is skyrocketing. From diagnosing periodontal disease, cariology, and crown designing to managing your dental practice’s marketing, AI is becoming an invaluable partner for many dental professionals.
In fact, one study A review of advancements of artificial intelligence in dentistry - Maryam Ghaffari, Yi Zhu, Annie Shrestha.
estimates the AI dental market will reach 1.3 billion USD by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.4 % from 2023 to 2028.
The sky is the limit for AI, both in terms of growth and its application.
From plaque indexes to quantifying tooth wear erosion - what’s next?
We have seen all the exciting stories of AI detecting or predicting cancer from digital images, and its use in analyzing periodontal issues.
However, with these types of applications, AI must first rely on one essential: a digital imaging solution, like a CBCT scanner or X-ray machine.
What if you could leverage AI in your daily patient monitoring routine to gain valuable insights and support your clinical decisions?
More efficient checkups with digital dental diagnostics
In a 2024 3Shape Market Survey, 3Shape found that nearly half of all dentists spend 50% of their time on diagnostics and 76% of their procedures on diagnostics and preventative care.
If you consider that 60-70 % of adults and 80-90 % of children have at least one dental checkup per year, diagnostics is one area where an AI application could make a significant impact on your practice efficiency.
Considering you or your hygienist spend more than half of your time on diagnostics, if AI’s speed and predictability could help make your check-ups more efficient, it could make a terrific contribution to your dentistry.
Leveraging AI for caries detection, tooth wear, plaque, and more
In our research, 3Shape identified five areas where AI applications, powered by an intraoral scan, could most benefit professionals and their diagnostics. These were helping them to identify plaque, tooth wear, gingival recession, and surface caries.
At 3Shape, we have been using AI in many of our solutions for years, such as with CAD design, eliminating soft tissue and stitching errors while intraoral scanning, and performing mundane tasks like identifying margin lines and segmenting teeth. 3Shape has a team dedicated solely to AI development.
The vision of applying AI to dental check-up diagnostics became a logical step for us, and one we hoped would open new doors to practice efficiency.
How to improve your patients’ experience
3Shape research also found that 94% of the patients we polled felt that 3D IOS real-time visualizations would encourage them to start a treatment immediately. This is a dramatic number.
Without an intraoral scanner and software, you might diagnose gingival recession or tooth wear during your patient's check-up, but you would have a hard time showing it to your patient. You could take a photo and hopefully have a matching picture from last year’s check-up to compare it to, or maybe you measured the recession or tooth wear and remembered to write it down in the journal, but either way, it’s a challenge to share the result with your patient.
But, as our research shows, 94% of your patients would likely want to start treatment because their condition was seen and explained on a screen. This helped motivate 3Shape to develop an AI application that could detect oral conditions for you and a compelling reason for you to want to adopt it.
The ability to share diagnostics onscreen with your patients is a potent treatment acceptance driver. Taking the idea a step further, if you could then send those results to their mobile phones, we are now talking about next- level treatment acceptance.
This scenario is the vision and reality behind the release of 3Shape’s newest innovations: TRIOS 6 intraoral scanner, its compatible AI assistive software - TRIOS Dx Plus, and the 3Shape patient app, DentalHealth.
It’s interesting to note that the previously mentioned 3Shape patient survey also found that 78% of dental consumers want personalized care guidance based on input and insights, and that 81% would increase their frequency of dentist visits if they had an app like 3Shape’s new DentalHealth.
Back to the future
AI has the potential to revolutionize your dentistry by enhancing understanding and in turn, the patient experience.
Imagine the productivity that 3Shape’s TRIOS Dx Plus AI assistive diagnostic software and TRIOS 6 would bring to your patient appointments. If you scanned your patients every visit, your hygienist could track and quantify changes to their oral situation, particularly the five conditions mentioned. You get both a scan record and hygiene check-up in one.
You would no longer need to use a disclosing agent for plaque or measure changes to the gingiva; the software and AI do it for you. And even better, the data would sync the data with your PMS. With caries detection, you could track growth or identify caries before confirming the results with an X-ray.
Best of all, you would also share the images and results with your patients via 3Shape’s DentalHealth mobile app.
It is already proven that when patients see their intraoral scans it is very impactful. Now imagine that impact plus diagnostics and sending it all to their mobile phones.
You are revolutionizing the patient experience!
AI as an objective second opinion
Moreover, AI could provide a second set of eyes during your diagnostic checkups for patients. For example, with the new 3Shape software, you could reference the results from it to confirm or identify issues to your patient’s oral health.
You or your hygienist could confirm the results with the software quantifying the changes for you in the patient-journal. AI enables you to have a second set of eyes and quantifiably document changes to the oral situation.
What this dentist is saying
Digital dentistry expert, Dr. Michael Scherer, tested TRIOS 6 and TRIOS Dx Plus software during IDS 2025 in Germany.
He summarized TRIOS 6 and TRIOS Dx Plus software’s impact on our future by saying, “As technology continues to evolve, the ability to track and compare dental data over time will become an essential part of patient care. TRIOS 6 and (TRIOS Dx Plus) software set the stage for a future where AI-driven dentistry enhances diagnostics, streamlines workflows, and ultimately improves patient understanding.
Whether you’re a general dentist, specialist, orthodontist, this scanner opens new doors to precision, efficiency, and improved patient education. The future of digital dentistry is here, and TRIOS 6 and software are leading the way!”
AI helps us all in many ways, and its application for dentists is growing daily. However, ultimately, all decisions will still rest on the dental professionals’ shoulders. But it’s nice to know that today’s dentists and their patients can make more transparent and educated decisions with the support of visual and quantified data.
As globally renowned practitioner, Dr. Jonathan L. Ferencz says, “the best patient is an educated patient.”
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*Proximal caries will be available end of 2025 and is not AI-detected. TRIOS Dx is not cleared by the FDA for clinical use in the USA.