AI Help for Dentists › Guides › AI X-ray analysis

AI X-ray analysis, explained for the practice owner — not the radiologist

The short version:

• What it does: analyzes radiographs and annotates suspected caries and bone loss, acting as a second set of eyes on every film — including the ones read at 4:50 PM on a double-booked Friday.
• FDA context: Denti.AI Detect and Pearl Second Opinion are FDA-cleared; Overjet is the platform that serves both dental providers and insurance payers. Verify clearance claims yourself.
• The hard limit: this is assistive software. Diagnosis, treatment planning, and liability stay with the dentist.
• Pricing reality: Denti.AI Detect is the only published price (from $49/mo per location). Overjet runs by quote (third-party reported ~$250–$1,500/mo); Pearl runs by quote (third-party reported ~$299/mo per location + ~$1,500 setup).
• Chairside payoff: a marked-up image is easier to explain to a patient than an unannotated gray film — measure the effect on case acceptance in your own chairs.

What does radiograph AI actually flag?

The software analyzes the X-rays your practice already takes and highlights areas consistent with pathology it was trained to find — the two categories every product in this space leads with are caries and bone loss. Findings appear as annotations layered on the image: the suspicious region marked where the algorithm sees it, presented for the dentist's review.

The realistic way to think about it is as a consistency tool. A dentist reading films varies with the day — patient load, fatigue, interruptions. The algorithm reads image number forty exactly as it read image number one. That doesn't make it smarter than the clinician; it makes it tireless, which is a different and genuinely useful property. Early-stage interproximal lesions and gradual crestal bone changes are precisely the findings that busy-day reading tends to defer to "watch."

What it does not do: it does not diagnose, it does not treatment-plan, and it does not take the provider's name off the chart. Every flag is an input to the dentist's judgment, and some flags will be wrong. Plan for the team to overrule the software regularly — that's the system working, not failing.

Which products are FDA-cleared — and why does that matter?

Software that analyzes medical images for pathology is a regulated medical device in the United States, so FDA clearance is the baseline credential to check. Among the tools this site covers, two carry it: Denti.AI Detect and Pearl Second Opinion, Pearl's real-time radiographic pathology product.

Overjet occupies a different position in the market: it is the radiograph AI platform built for both sides of the claims table, serving dental providers and insurance payers. That dual footprint matters practically — the same category of analysis a payer's system applies to your claims is available on the provider side, which is part of Overjet's pitch to practices that fight radiograph-supported claim disputes.

Two cautions. First, clearance applies to specific products and uses, not to a vendor's whole catalog — ask which product, cleared for what. Second, check the claim yourself against FDA records instead of accepting a slide. A vendor that hedges on this question has answered it.

What does the chairside conversation gain?

Ask practices why they keep radiograph AI after the trial and the answer is often about patients, not detection. "You have a cavity forming between these two teeth" competes with every instinct a patient has to defer treatment. The same finding shown as a marked region on the screen — visible to the patient, in the operatory, while they're in the chair — changes the texture of the conversation. The dentist is no longer asking to be taken on faith about a shadow.

Be careful with the claims here, though. Vendors talk about case acceptance; your numbers are the only ones that count. If you pilot one of these tools, record your acceptance rate for the relevant procedures before and after, and let the data make the renewal decision. If the analytics side of that measurement is the gap, Dental Intelligence is the tool built for watching those numbers.

What does dental radiograph AI cost?

One published price and two quote-based sales processes. That asymmetry is the single most useful fact for a buyer, because it tells you where you can budget from a pricing page and where you're negotiating.

Weighing the two quote-based heavyweights? Our Overjet vs Pearl comparison goes deeper. The full field — radiograph AI next to phones, analytics, and PMS platforms — is in the dental AI software comparison.

A budgeting note on the spread: at Denti.AI Detect's published $49/mo per location, a trial is nearly a rounding error for most practices. The quote-based products can land an order of magnitude higher depending on locations and scope, which is why third-party reported ranges are labeled exactly that — reported, not promised. Get quotes in writing and ask what setup, training, and per-location fees sit outside the monthly figure.

Where are the limits?

Three worth stating plainly. First, the dentist diagnoses — radiograph AI is assistive, its findings are inputs, and clinical and legal responsibility for the read stays with the provider who signs the chart. Second, algorithms produce false positives and false negatives; a practice that treats every AI flag as a finding will over-treat, and one that stops looking at films because "the AI has it" has misunderstood the product. Third, the software sees images, not patients — history, symptoms, and the clinical exam still carry the weight the radiograph can't.

If AI findings feed into your clinical notes or claims documentation, the review discipline from our AI charting and notes guide applies with equal force here: nothing goes into the record unreviewed.

See it in action

Common questions

Sources

Denti.AI — Detect from $49/mo per location, vendor-published at denti.ai/pricing, checked 2026-07-12. Overjet — by quote; ~$250–$1,500/mo is third-party reported, checked 2026-07-12. Pearl Second Opinion — by quote; ~$299/mo per location + ~$1,500 setup is third-party reported, checked 2026-07-12. Confirm all pricing and FDA-clearance status with each vendor. Last reviewed: 2026-07-12.