The crucial role of dentomaxillofacial radiology for AI research in dental medicine – why it’s time for our specialty to lead the way!

The past year has remained under the shadow of the COVID pandemic, and, although vaccinations are available worldwide and booster campaigns are ongoing, while writing these lines, the most recent virus variant Omicron has just appeared and is already spreading all over the globe. Nevertheless, 2021 was a successful and delightful year for our journal, as it was the 50th volume of the journal since its first publication in 1972. The specially invited reviews from internationally renowned experts covering historical aspects of our journal as well as technological innovations in our field have received a lot of interest. The dedicated page on the journals homepage for the article collection can be accessed through: https://wwwbirpublicationsorg/dmfr/dmfr50. Four of the 50th anniversary articles are in the top six downloads of the past year, and all eight are in the top 30. The article by Heo and coworkers on AI in oral and maxillofacial radiology was the most downloaded article in 2021.¹

That an article on AI would have such an impact on our readers is actually not a complete surprise. As already mentioned in my previous editorial in the summer of 2021, articles assessing applications in the field of AI have been attracting constantly high attention in our journal, and in medicine and dentistry in general.² The development of AI-based tools to address specific problems and facilitate steps in either diagnosis, treatment planning or follow-up is currently a highly discussed topic in various fields of dental medicine. Specifically to dentomaxillofacial radiology and imaging, such research comprises articles on tooth detection and numbering, the diagnosis of specific diseases, or facilitating cephalometric analyses for orthodontists.³ From these rather specific tasks, one might envision that AI applications could help to pave the way to promote personalised dentistry based on patient-centered research.⁴ AI could facilitate the practice of personalised dental medicine through applications leading to individualised optimization of radiation dose, personalised diagnosis and prompt referral, as well as facilitating digital workflows, which could make diagnosis and treatment more predictable and precise. As many applications using AI apply imaging modalities as a data basis of their algorithms, it seems evident that our specialty should actually be on the scientific forefront in the field of personalised dental medicine. Therefore, I would like to encourage all readers here to submit their research to DMFR, and help us to make this journal a driver of innovation in dental medicine—not only in its specific field, but ideally also in an interdisciplinary perspective. Maybe then, the increase of about 35% of our journal’s impact factor to 2.419 in 2021 is only an inital indicator of the growing relevance of our specialty and our journal.

To increase visibility further and also to enable as well as facilitate access to articles published in our journal, DMFR now offers pre-funded open access to authors based at participating institutions in the following countries: Austria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and from January 2022, Australia and New Zealand. Authors affiliated with those specific institutions can publish their work open access at no cost to the authors themselves. Already to date, 14 DMFR articles and author groups have benefited from this so far. For further information, please check out the following link to the website: https://wwwbirpublicationsorg/page/pre-funded-oa/dmfr.

Michael M. Bornstein

Editor DMFR