PT-MIL:Parallel transformer based on multi-instance learning for osteoporosis detection in panoramic oral radiography

Osteoporosis is a systemic disease characterized by low bone mass,impaired bone microstruc-ture,increased bone fragility,and a higher risk of fractures.It commonly affects postmenopausal women and the elderly.Orthopantomography,also known as panoramic radiography,is a widely used imaging technique in dental examinations due to its low cost and easy accessibility.Previous studies have shown that the mandibular cortical index(MCI)derived from orthopantomography can serve as an important indicator of osteoporosis risk.To address this,this study proposes a parallel Transformer network based on multiple instance learning.By introducing parallel modules that alleviate optimization issues and integrating multiple-instance learning with the Transformer architecture,our model effectively extracts information from image patches.Our model achieves an accuracy of 86%and an AUC score of 0.963 on an osteoporosis dataset,which demonstrates its promising and competitive performance.