DentaScan

Where the idea came from

I was lying in the chair at a dental checkup while my dad and my dentist talked about how old most of the technology dentists use still is. Meanwhile my dentist was checking my teeth and gums with a mirror and a light. I figured that could be done a lot better. A toothbrush-shaped device with LED lights, a high-resolution camera, and an AI model could look at every tooth and flag problems.

After researching it, I learned that lighting the tooth with more than one kind of light, including infrared, and capturing with CMOS image sensors picks up information a normal camera misses. That became the multi-spectral design.

What I've built so far

• A smartphone-camera capture app (Python/Flask) with image-quality checks and a screen for reviewing detections.
• A YOLO model trained on a public dental dataset to detect caries (cavities), packaged as ONNX so it can run on the device.
• CAD for a 3D-printable device with an articulating tip.
• The full patent specification, 19 pages of text and 11 pages of drawings, filed with the USPTO as a provisional application in August 2026.

What's next

I'm preparing the non-provisional filing. I want to add X-ray images to the analysis eventually, and track each tooth over time so changes show up early. I plan to keep building DentaScan in college.