Diagnosis of periodontitis with the energy information in dental panoramic image

In dental panoramic imaging the teeth and jaws are imaged with x-rays. And in this imaging, energy of photons is acquired with the integral manner and thus we cannot use the information of x-ray energy passing through the materials. On the other hand, the linear attenuation coefficient of a given material is a unique function of the energy. We developed a new dental panoramic apparatus (QRmaster-P) that is able to acquire photons with four energy windows simultaneously. Thus we can use the information of photon energy passing through a given material. This paper investigated the possibility of diagnosing periodontitis with energy information obtained with the detector. In this study we introduced a measure of x-ray energy spectrum passing through the material. And we could detect periodontitis with this measure. The results of simulations showed that our measure was almost equivalent to the diagnosis of dentists in terms of the predictability of periodontitis.