Diagnóstico diferencial de lesões periapicais por meio do diagnóstico auxiliado por computador: uma revisão integrativa

Abstract

Introduction: Periapical lesions are some of the important and common oral pathologies, with periapical cyst and granuloma being two different types of existing periapical lesions. The diagnostic differentiation of these lesions plays an important role in the choice of treatment, and histopathological evaluation of the lesion can be used to confirm the differential diagnosis. With this invasive approach, the patient is subjected to unnecessary surgeries and associated complications. In this context, the rise of technological means has facilitated the emergence of Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD). Such diagnosis is performed through the analysis of radiographic images, enabling a non-invasive differential diagnosis. Objective: To identify and analyze, through an integrative review, studies on computer-aided diagnosis in distinguishing periapical granulomas and radicular cysts. Methodology: An integrative review was conducted on journals indexed in the IEEE Xplore, Scopus, and PubMed databases. Open Thesis and Open Grey were also utilized for the partial capture of "grey literature". Manual searching was also conducted through a systematic analysis of the references of eligible articles. Results: According to the search strategy, initially, a total of 250 articles were found. After the analysis of inclusion criteria, 04 articles were considered eligible. Through the study of these works, it was possible to note that periapical cysts are more frequent than radicular granulomas. The analyzed studies obtained accuracy in their results, regardless of the imaging examinations used or analysis models. Conclusion: The present work highlights that the analysis of studies using images and computer-aided diagnosis presents promising results with high accuracy. However, it is essential for there to be more studies on the subject in question, since only 04 studies are not sufficient to evaluate a new analysis method. Clinical Significance: A computer-aided differential diagnosis approach between cysts and granulomas through image analysis allows for a non-invasive and objective diagnosis, contributing to cost and clinical time reduction, promoting more comfort to the patient.