The Role of Artificial Intelligence Models in Predicting Post-Prosthetic Facial Esthetics in Edentulous Patients: Clinical and Anthropometric Comparative Study.

Published in European journal of dentistry. Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in esthetic dentistry; however, its accuracy in predicting post-prosthetic facial outcomes in edentulous patients remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the ability of AI models to simulate post-denture facial esthetics compared with actual clinical outcomes. A prospective within-subject observational study was conducted on 14 completely edentulous patients receiving new complete dentures. Standardized facial photographs were obtained pretreatment (T0) and posttreatment (T1). AI-generated images were produced from T0 photographs using Gemini (G-P) and FaceApp (FA-P). Outcomes included patient preference, expert esthetic evaluation, and quantitative facial anthropometric measurements. Nonnormally distributed paired facial measurements were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Differences among image types and expert panel scores were analyzed using the Friedman test (two-way analysis of variance by ranks), with post hoc Wilcoxon signed-rank tests where applicable. Participant preferences were assessed using the chi-square goodness-of-fit test. Statistical significance was set at p ≤0.05. No significant differences were found in patient preferences ( p = 0.247) and in expert evaluations between actual and AI-generated images ( p = 0.316), with high inter-rater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient >0.85). Anthropometric analysis revealed significant differences across most variables ( p < 0.001) in o...