Evaluation of near-infrared digital imaging transillumination compared with bitewing radiography for proximal caries detection in children

Background: Limitations in traditional caries detection tools have driven the development of alternatives methods, focused on the early lesion detection such as near-infrared digital imaging transillumination (NIDIT). Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of NIDIT compared with bitewing radiography (BWR) in the detection of interproximal carious lesions in children. Design: A retrospective audit of data from children who had NIDIT, BWR and intraoral photographs was conducted. Carious lesions were scored on a tooth surface level with BWR acting as the primary reference for comparison. Accuracy was determined using multi-class area under the curve (AUC), and correlation was determined using Fleiss' Kappa. Results: Data from 499 tooth surfaces involving 44 children were included in this study. The average age across the participants was 86 months (~7 years) with an average dmft (decayed, missing and filled teeth in primary dentition) of 5.29. Multi-class AUC comparing NIDIT to BWR was 0.70. The correlation between NIDIT and BWR was moderate (0.43), whereas the correlation between photographic examination and BWR was 0.30, which is fair. Conclusion: When compared to BWR, NIDIT showed a high specificity but a low sensitivity for proximal caries detection in primary teeth.