Bree Jones is investigating how 3D images from intraoral scanners and AI technology can work together to spot early signs of dental disease and decay in children.
She is still in the early stages of her research career, but PhD candidate Bree Jones (BSc 2005, BOralHth 2008, MPH 2017, GCDT 2021) has already accumulated significant oral health experience in the clinic, classroom and research arena.
She has worked as an oral health therapist in public and private practice, lectured in Oral Health at Melbourne Dental School (MDS), mentored Bachelor of Oral Health students, and she will shortly complete her PhD.
“It has been serendipitous,” she says. “You pursue interests, meet people and opportunities come up. I love being able to talk with students and break down complex ideas into more straightforward concepts. I always want to maintain the teaching element, but I wanted to build my research profile too and then share those skills with other researchers and mentor them. We learn, then we share and bring everyone along on the way.”
Her PhD research investigates the validity of 3D images produced using handheld intraoral scanners to clinically detect early signs of dental decay in children. Bree is now taking her research a step further and investigating how AI can be used to analyse the images and detect dental decay.
This could improve access to dental assessments in children, and in clinical practice it may streamline workflows and ensure more cases of childhood dental decay and disease are spotted and treated early.
Bree has also received the 2024 International Association for Dental, Oral and Cranifocial Research Colgate Research in Prevention Travel Award.
Her oral health career began when she completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne while working parttime as a dental assistant.
That’s where you see the problems are and realise solutions are needed. You’re at the forefront of witnessing the issues, the need, the importance of outreach and screening, and of communicating key oral health messages to children and families says Bree.
That clinical experience sparked an interest in oral health, especially in finding new ways to prevent oral disease in children. Bree completed a Bachelor of Oral Health and began tutoring Oral Health students at MDS. She then went on to manage Oral Health programs at Charles Sturt University, before returning to MDS as a coordinator and turning her attention to research.
Bree’s work is a part of a large collaborative research program led by her PhD supervisor, Dr Mihiri Silva (BDSc 2004, MDSc 2012, DCD 2013, PhD 2019), that spans MDS and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to understand disease patterns and prevent dental caries in early childhood. This requires the kind of data that is usually gathered in clinical examinations but this takes time and gathering enough data to compare is a logistical challenge.
Bree believes handheld intraoral scanners that scan the mouth and take thousands of images of teeth to produce an accurate 3D digital impression are an effective way to gather this data more easily.
“The next part of my research is looking at how we can advance this technology and train robust AI models to detect decay or disease. Could this technology be used to enhance disease surveillance in children?” she says.
Bree also believes in the power of mentoring. “At MDS, we’ve always had a strong group of academics who advocated for our program and the influence we can have in the workforce. We’ve got a lot of strong female leaders who allocate time to mentoring the next group. And then you do that yourself.”
Bree is a member of the Dental Diagnostics and Digital Dentistry group — part of the ITU/WHO/WIPO Global Initiative on AI for Health that is exploring artificial intelligence in health. She sees AI playing an increasing role in oral health.
But AI models are only as good as the quality of the data that trains them, so we need to retain quality control over any data used in AI models — it needs to be validated and benchmarked. If AI is to become part of decision-making in clinical practice, we also need to ensure clinicians interact with AI ethically, responsibly and transparently Bree says.
“I’d love to build the literacy of MDS students and clinicians more broadly in working with this technology and to work with my colleagues to build national and international networks, so we can build a centre of research excellence focused on AI in dentistry. The outcomes could inform policy and guidelines, improve patient outcomes and have real impacts.”
Find out about research at MDS: dental.unimelb.edu.au/research
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