AI Brings Accuracy to Dental Treatment Planning

Researchers from the University of Sulaimani in Iraq have recently investigated whether artificial intelligence (AI) can reliably predict how long certain dental procedures will take, with promising results. They trained AI models on 2,500 past procedure records and then tested the models on an additional 500 records to evaluate accuracy and clinical relevance.

The idea behind this work is practical: many dental practices struggle with scheduling, resource allocation, and minimizing patient wait times. Knowing in advance how long a treatment is likely to last could help clinics optimize workflow, reduce bottlenecks, and improve the patient experience.

In their tests, the AI model demonstrated fast processing speeds—prediction times ranged from under 15 milliseconds to just a few milliseconds, depending on the approach (e.g., lookup-table vs model computation). The memory footprint of the model was also very modest, at less than 45 MB even when handling 10,000 records.

Because the actual treatment durations and predicted durations did not follow a normal distribution (per the Shapiro–Wilk test), the researchers used non-parametric statistical tests to assess accuracy rather than conventional parametric methods. This ensured that their evaluation remained robust despite the skewed data.

The authors emphasize that while the AI system is not yet perfect, its performance is “encouraging” regarding effective time management in a dental setting. They suggest that integrating such AI tools could help clinics better manage scheduling, reduce delays, and improve resource usage. Future research, they propose, should assess the economic impact of deploying such systems—i.e., whether clinics save enough time and cost to justify the investment.

Original Article Information

“AI shows promise in predicting dental treatment durations”

Oral Health Group, August 26, 2025