Diagnostic accuracy of intraoral mobile photography for oral health screening in children: a pilot study

Jul 11, 2025BMC oral health

How well mobile mouth photos can screen children's oral health: a pilot study

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Abstract

Intraoral mobile photography showed a sensitivity of 95.8% for assessing caries experience intensity in children.

Specificity for assessing caries experience intensity was 89.2%.
Mobile photography achieved 100% sensitivity for the simplified oral hygiene index.
The modified gingival index had a sensitivity of 77.6% and specificity of 93.8%.
Positive predictive values ranged from 74.3% to 97.7% across the indices evaluated.
Cohen's Kappa values indicated substantial agreement for most indices, with the highest at 0.928.

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BACKGROUND: Mobile dental photography is increasing in relevance in the diagnosis of oral diseases. This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of intraoral mobile photography in assessing caries experience intensity (decayed, missing/extracted, filled teeth [/]), simplified oral hygiene index, and modified gingival index.

METHODS: This study included 358 children of 7-12 years of age. A clinician evaluated DMFT/deft; simplified oral hygiene; and modified gingival indices by visual examination. Simultaneously, dental students recorded intraoral photographs with a mobile phone in eight predetermined projections. Another oral professional calculated indices based on the photographs. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of dental photography were evaluated, and Cohen's kappa was calculated.

RESULTS: A total of 2864 photographs were evaluated in this study. The sensitivity and specificity of mobile photography for DMFT; deft; simplified oral hygiene, and modified gingival indices were 95.8 (95% confidence interval: 93.4-98.3) and 89.2 (83-95.5); 100.0 (100-100) and 88.6 (79.3-98); 89.7 (85.8-93.5) and 91.4 (86.3-96.5); and 77.6 (67.6-87.6) and 93.8 (91-96.6), respectively; positive predictive values were 96.2, 97.7, 95.6, and 74.3; negative predictive values 88.3, 100.0, 80.9, and 94.8; and Cohen's Kappa values were 0.848, 0.928, 0.784, and 0.702, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: Intraoral mobile photography, based on appropriate guidelines, is reliable for assessing DMFT/deft; simplified oral hygiene; and modified gingival indices in children and could be a useful tool in dental public health, supporting the involvement of dental students in similar research studies.

Key numbers

95.8%

Sensitivity for

Sensitivity of mobile photography for assessing .

89.2%

Specificity for

Specificity of mobile photography for assessment.

96.2%

Positive Predictive Value for

PPV of mobile photography for .

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Diagnostic accuracy of intraoral mobile photography for oral health screening in children: a pilot study

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