Dr Usman M Qureshi
Orthodontics

Dental monitoring: how artificial intelligence is taking orthodontics to the next level

Written by: Dr Usman M Qureshi

Published: 26/11/2019 | Updated: 27/11/2019

Edited by: Cameron Gibson-Watt

Dental monitoring is becoming the most innovative orthodontic treatment in the last 10 years. Using artificial intelligence, patients can effectively use their smartphone to monitor their treatment progress with their orthodontists. Dr Usman Qureshi, an orthodontist from Origin Orthodontics in London, explains how the introduction of dental monitoring is making treatment more efficient and effective for both his practice and patients.

How exactly does dental monitoring work?

Dental monitoring (DM) is a remote monitoring application that works from your smartphone. Patients are able to capture a series of clinical images that allow us to monitor the progress of their aligner treatment with greater accuracy.

Patients submit their images weekly from the comfort of their home which allows us to determine how effectively their aligner treatment is progressing. This then lets us can tailor aligner treatments to each patient’s needs. It combines artificial intelligence technology to gauge the accuracy in conjunction with clinician review.

How do patients get set up with this treatment?

Patients suitable for Invisalign clear aligner treatment are offered this enhanced technology as a standard in all of our clinics. As one of the first providers of this technology in the UK, we have monitored several hundred scans since being an early adopter of this technique in early 2018.

What are the advantages of dental monitoring?

From the clinic’s perspective

The main advantage we have found has been an improvement in the overall quality of treatment we can provide to our patients, as we can review the accuracy of aligner movements to the tenth of a millimetre. Unlike other clinicians, we can review our patients on a weekly basis as opposed to every 2-3 months. This allows us to identify and tailor the aligners to each patient, as some stages of treatment can progress faster than others. It also allows us to keep a careful eye out for clinical problems that may occur like the detachment of small Invisalign attachments or oral hygiene problems to ensure the risks of gum problems during treatment are minimised.

From the patient’s perspective

You can rest assured that we are checking in on your treatment weekly - which helps us to provide feedback on your treatment. There is also as an instant messaging portal to make direct contact with us too. In addition, it helps to reduce the number of appointments required in the clinic which greatly minimises disruption to a patient’s busy work schedule, and for children, it helps to reduce time out of schools. The other advantage is that as the accuracy and efficiency of our Invisalign treatment improve, our patients seem to be completing their treatments sooner as the overall duration of treatment time is reduced.

Which treatments does dental monitoring work with?

We are currently using photo monitoring alongside Invisalign treatments. Right now, we are looking to extend this technology into the management of all our patients when they complete their active treatment and enter the retention phase of treatment.

Retention is the phase of treatment immediately after orthodontic treatment when there is a tendency for teeth to want to return to their original position. At our clinic, we always provide fixed and removable retainers to prevent this unwanted change.

With DM, we would be able to increase the accuracy, efficiency and frequency of checks with our retention patients for all systems, whether they have had aligners or lingual braces. We hope to launch this service in 2020.

Dr Usman Qureshi is a specialist orthodontist who practices at Origin Orthodontics in London. If you are interested in remote dental monitoring treatment, or you simply want to find out more, you can make a consultation with him via his Top Doctor’s profile to discuss this further.

By Dr Usman M Qureshi

Orthodontics in London

Dr Usman Qureshi is a specialist orthodontist based in London whose areas of expertise include adult orthodontics, lingual fixed braces, incognito lingual braces, paediatric orthodontics and dental monitoring - an exciting new technology that enables orthodontists to monitor your treatment progress remotely. Dr Usman Qureshi qualified as a dentist in 2001 from the University of Manchester and following a number of dental hospital positions in both Manchester and London he completed his specia...

By Dr Usman M Qureshi
Orthodontics

Dr Usman Qureshi is a specialist orthodontist based in London whose areas of expertise include adult orthodontics, lingual fixed braces, incognito lingual braces, paediatric orthodontics and dental monitoring - an exciting new technology that enables orthodontists to monitor your treatment progress remotely.

Dr Usman Qureshi qualified as a dentist in 2001 from the University of Manchester and following a number of dental hospital positions in both Manchester and London he completed his specialisation and advanced training at the Royal London Dental Institute in 2008. This resulted in being awarded the Membership in Orthodontics from the Royal College of Surgeons (England) and also the David DiBiase Clinical prize for the quality of his clinical work.

He is a highly regarded Specialist Orthodontist based in both our Wimpole Street and Southgate practices accepting referrals from dental colleagues and specialists. Dr Qureshi is one of the UK’s more experienced Invisalign Orthodontists with a Platinum Elite status in both Invisalign and Incognito Lingual Braces, recognising the many hundreds of patients he has cared for with these techniques.

In addition to being the lead orthodontist at Origin Orthodontics, he is a long standing Clinical Lecturer on the postgraduate orthodontic training programme at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL); sharing his extensive clinical experience to train the next generation of orthodontists. He has also maintained an active involvement in clinical research at QMUL and during his time he has been a key contributor on a number of internationally published clinical research trials. He is also a member of the American Association of Orthodontists, British and European Orthodontic Societies as well as the British Lingual Orthodontic Society.

Dr Qureshi’s extensive clinical experience means he routinely sees complex and challenging cases requiring multi-disciplinary care with restorative specialists or maxillofacial surgery. He has a particular expertise in functional appliances for helping to treat jaw irregularities in growing children.

Always seeking to be at the forefront of orthodontic technology, Dr Qureshi became involved in teledentistry as a dental student in Manchester where he was involved in one of the UK’s first teledentisty clinical studies. He has since been one of the first orthodontists in the UK to adopt remote monitoring technology to improve the quality of Invisalign treatments with Dental Monitoring (DM). Dr Qureshi leads our DM team supported by our clinical team in London and our technical team in Paris.