Design of tele-educational system for interpreting dental tumor images

Despite the fact that oral cancer is usually diagnosed with the naked eye, dental radiology can play a significant role in the process of diagnosis, treatment planning, assessment of response to treatment, and prognosis. This paper will discuss a prototype tele-educational system to support dental radiology training programs, which will help dental students get the skills necessary for interpreting dental tumor images. The system consists of a central database, an online case annotation tool and a case demonstration tool. The annotation tool allows dental faculty to integrate image findings with related clinical information, and to prepare high-quality teaching cases. The tele-educational system can improve and reinforce dental students’ and dentists’ skills in analyzing dental tumor images. The design of tele-educational system could serve as a model for self-evaluation of interpreting skills in dental tumor images as part of Continuous Medical Education (CME) in the future.