A Boston-based tech com­pa­ny, backed by Mark Zucker­berg’s den­tist father, has suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged the world’s first all-robot­ic den­tal procedure.

The Rise of AI-Powered Dental Care

Per­cep­tive, a busi­ness that har­ness­es arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent imag­ing soft­ware paired with a robot­ic arm, has tak­en a big bite out of future med­ical technology. 

The ini­tial treat­ment, which took place in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia, shows the bot inde­pen­dent­ly drilling into and shav­ing down a per­son­’s tooth, a process called “cut­ting”.

“This med­ical break­through enhances pre­ci­sion and effi­cien­cy of den­tal pro­ce­dures, and democ­ra­tizes access to bet­ter den­tal care, for improved patient expe­ri­ence and clin­i­cal out­comes,” said CEO Dr. Chris Ciriello.

Revolutionizing Dental Diagnostics and Treatment

The tech­nol­o­gy works by scan­ning images beneath a patien­t’s gum­line and then using AI for analy­sis before the robot­ic arms are put into action. 

Per­cep­tive’s AI robot­ics sys­tem uses 3D data for diag­nos­tics and treat­ment plan­ning, “enabling ear­ly and high­ly accu­rate diag­noses,” accord­ing to the press release.

“The robot­ics sys­tem has been designed and rig­or­ous­ly test­ed to ensure that den­tists can per­form treat­ments safe­ly, even in con­di­tions where patient move­ment is preva­lent,” said Dr. Edward Zucker­berg, the Face­book founder’s father who made a name for him­self in the field.

Improved Accuracy and Patient Safety

Ger­man Gal­luic­ci, who chairs Restora­tive Den­tistry at Har­vard School of Den­tal Med­i­cine, also bragged about the num­bers behind the new, high-tech approach — a 90% accu­ra­cy rate com­pared to con­ven­tion­al X‑rays of 40%.

“This ensures safer and more pre­cise diag­noses, enhanc­ing patient care and safe­ty,” Gal­luic­ci asserted.