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When was the last time your dentist mentioned that artificial intelligence was scanning your X-rays before you even sat down in the chair? General dentist Sowjanya Gunukula explains how AI is quietly transforming routine dental checkups in ways most patients never hear about. Based on her KevinMD article, “How AI in dentistry is changing your next checkup,” this conversation breaks down the two major applications reshaping dental care today: radiographic analysis that color-codes cavities and bone loss in real time, and predictive analytics that sort patients into risk categories for more personalized treatment plans. Gunukula describes how AI acts as a second set of eyes that never gets tired, catching early problems on busy days that the human eye might miss. You’ll learn why dentistry is shifting from reactive to preventive, how AI-driven risk profiling can mean less time in the chair and lower costs, and why patients should feel empowered to ask their dentist how these tools are being used. She also addresses concerns about over-reliance and explains why responsible adoption keeps the patient relationship at the center. If you want to understand what is already happening behind the scenes at your next dental visit, this episode is worth your time.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome Sowjanya Gunukula. She’s a general dentist, and today’s KevinMD article is “How AI in Dentistry Is Changing Your Next Checkup.” Sowjanya, welcome to the show.

Sowjanya Gunukula: Thanks for having me, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us what led you to write this article on KevinMD, and tell us about the article itself for those who didn’t get a chance to read it.

Sowjanya Gunukula: All right, so let me introduce myself first. I’m a general dentist. I’m based in Flower Mound, Texas. I’m currently practicing general dentistry with over five years of clinical experience, and I’m currently involved in a lot of research, which is in pediatric dentistry and also improving the oral access to the underserved population.

So over the past few years, I’ve become very interested in how these emerging technologies, especially AI, are involved in today’s dentistry and helping detect the disease early, and also improving the communication with the patient.

I’ve been practicing every day here in Flower Mound, and I see most of the people. The main reason why I wanted to write this article is that I think most of the patients hear about artificial intelligence in medicine, but they don’t realize that AI is already being used in dentistry. AI is reading their X-rays. AI is highlighting their potential cavities, bone loss, and helping detect all these initial problems in the early stages so we can prevent the bigger problems in the future.

So I wanted to explain this in very simple terms, what exactly this AI is bringing in their next checkup, and how the patients know about their oral care and also motivate them to prevent any bigger issues going on. So that’s why I’m here writing this article and right now talking to you on KevinMD.

Kevin Pho: All right, so if I go to a general dentist and they do routine X-rays, bite wings and whatever, AI is giving a second opinion or reading that X-ray. Is that what you’re saying? So tell us some of the typical ways that AI is being in the background whenever I visit a general dentist.

Sowjanya Gunukula: Yes. It’s actually acting as a second set of eyes. AI is now an integral part of the dentist right now, and it’s reading the X-rays in the background, silently reading it out even before the patient is realizing that it’s doing it. And then I’m talking to the patients and showing them these potential cavities and different color codings and AI-based bone loss and everything. So this is doing in the background and helping people read their X-rays with more clear understanding, and also helping the patients in that way.

Kevin Pho: And how accurate is AI in the general dentist field? Do you worry about false positives, false negatives? How does it help you personally? Give us an example of how it helps you.

Sowjanya Gunukula: I also wanted to tell that AI is not replacing dentists. It’s just becoming another tool, helping detect the disease earlier. While I’m making the treatment decisions and communicating with the patients, it’s just adding as another tool, helping me to catch the problems that can be missed on a very busy day.

So that’s how the AI is helping us, as a second set of eyes. You can tell it’s a spell check for a dentist, so I can just rely on it because it doesn’t get tired. The human eye can get tired, but not the AI. So it’s trained on many pixels, and we really appreciate this tool helping us prevent the disease. It’s not replacing the dentist.

Kevin Pho: Now, would you say that’s pretty much standard of care now if you go to any general dentist throughout the country, that the fact that AI acts as a second pair of eyes when reading X-rays, is that pretty much everywhere now?

Sowjanya Gunukula: So AI is now getting everywhere, and most of the clinicians, even the dentists, we are open to this tool because it’s helping us as a second set of eyes.

Kevin Pho: All right. So other than X-rays, how else is AI affecting your daily life as a dentist?

Sowjanya Gunukula: So I would say there are two main applications of AI in the dentistry right now. The most mature use of the AI in dentistry today is the radiographic analysis, which I was talking about: reading the X-rays in the background, scanning the data quickly, and then highlighting the potential cavities, flagging those bone loss areas and the other abnormalities, and catching the small things that often can be missed on a very busy day.

This is one of the most important things, and what this means for patients is less pain. Because most commonly these days, dentistry is becoming more reactive, because people go to the dentist only when they feel pain or when they missed an appointment or something, but they don’t think about taking care of their oral health and preventing the problems even before they become bigger. So this scanning of the X-rays is one way that they can prevent the bigger issues.

And the second way is the AI does the predictive analytics. It predictively analyzes the patterns in the dental history of the patient, and helps us identify the risk categories, so that I can deliver to the patient the most personalized treatment care. It can generate a personalized oral health profile for them. It analyzes the risk categories, and that way I can direct my conversations to the patients based on their oral health needs, more personalized, rather than standardized and routine care.

Kevin Pho: Yeah. So as you know, this is a medical podcast, and I think a lot of us, we’re just not familiar with what goes on behind the scenes in dentistry. So when it comes to predictive analytics, give us a story or an example of, you said that you could personalize your care based on the AI’s predictive analytics. Can you tell us an example of that happening? What would be a common example?

Sowjanya Gunukula: Yes. The common example would be, when a patient comes in and sits in the chair, and I do the X-rays and the AI reading tools, then it will tell, and I can show the patient the patterns of how their bone loss is, let’s say, for example, the bone loss. I can read the bone loss patterns in the patient’s mouth from time to time, and I can explain that to the patient, and categorize the patient into low, medium, high risk categories. Based on that, I can generate the preventive steps for them, going from lower to high risk. Or I can tell them, if they are at high risk, they might be losing their teeth, or they might be expecting some other problems from these issues.

So they will be cautious and they can take the preventive steps and actively involve in the routine dental care, as well as the personalized care that is directed towards their gum issue or the bone issue. So that’s how they can eliminate the issues going bigger. For the patients, that means less pain, less time invested in the chair, and less cost. So that’s how it can help.

Kevin Pho: Do you ever have dentists, it could be your colleagues or other dentists that you meet at conferences, they’re excited about AI but maybe cautious about what the future brings. They may be worried that they may be over-reliant on AI. What does responsible adoption of AI look like in a dental practice?

Sowjanya Gunukula: I would say one of the important lessons that everybody, my colleagues or my other fellow dentists, I would say stay open to the new tools while keeping the patient relationships at the center of the care. Because AI is not replacing dentists, it’s just helping us identify, detect the disease earlier, plan the preventive care, and better communicate this with the patients. I know technology can bring us a lot. It’s overwhelming, but still we need to keep an open-minded thing to these new tools, because this can help us analyze and communicate better with the patients.

Kevin Pho: So I know that in practices like mine, we have a lot of AI scribes to help us with documentation, and we always, of course, have to disclose that to patients. Does the conversation of AI ever come up in the dentist’s chair? Do you ever talk to patients about AI, overreading and having a second opinion on some of their X-rays? Does that conversation ever come up whenever you talk to patients?

Sowjanya Gunukula: They are pretty much amazed, actually. I wouldn’t necessarily say that, but most people are pretty much amazed to see how AI works. Without the AI, they feel like there is a shadow in their X-rays that means so many things. But with the AI, we can just differentiate while color coding everything, and then pretty much easily locate for the patients what these things are happening.

I don’t feel like they’re asking too many questions, but I feel like they should ask. They should definitely be empowered to ask how it’s being used in dentistry and how it’s working in the background. I want them to feel empowered to ask these questions to their dentist and how it’s going to help, because they are going to take an active role when they know these things in their oral health care.

Kevin Pho: In your article, you talk about future tools where patients maybe can take pictures of their teeth or their mouth and get some guidance, especially as AI analytics and AI tools become more advanced. So tell us about what you think the future is going to bring as AI matures and how that’s going to affect patients and their dental issues.

Sowjanya Gunukula: So I think AI has a lot of scope to get into the dentistry as far as bringing that communication ease for both the patient and the dentist. And it can bring a lot of other things, like smart tools and smart technologies, involving scanning their teeth quickly, within less time, and eliminating all those traditional impressions or something like that, which can be much more time consuming. This is pretty much acceptable by all the patients, and those future things, the smart writing things or smart technologies, can definitely help us better.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Sowjanya Gunukula. She’s a general dentist. Today’s KevinMD article is “How AI in Dentistry Is Changing Your Next Checkup.” Now I want to end with some take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Sowjanya Gunukula: Yes, the take-home message I would say for today is, artificial intelligence is not replacing dentists. It’s only becoming another tool to detect the disease earlier and help dentists take the preventive primary care necessary and have targeted conversations with the patients, and also communicate more effectively. This is not about making dentistry more technological. The goal is to maintain the health of the patient’s smile while going for fewer invasive treatments.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you again for sharing your perspective and insight, and thanks again for coming on the show.

Sowjanya Gunukula: Thank you. Thanks for having me.