YOUR phone could soon be your best dental assistant. A novel intelligent toothbrush, PIT, has demonstrated the ability to deliver real-time plaque visualisation during brushing using advanced imaging and a connected smartphone, drastically improving dental hygiene outcomes.
Smarter Oral Hygiene Through Real-Time Imaging
Traditional dental plaque disclosing agents can only guide cleaning once brushing is complete, leaving gaps in plaque removal accuracy. To address this, engineers created PIT: a toothbrush equipped with an internal camera, green LEDs, and a neural network that works in tandem with a smartphone. This design helps users identify plaque beneath toothpaste foam, forming a new, AI-driven oral care experience on everyday mobile devices.
Data-Driven Cleaning Performance
Researchers tested PIT alongside the Oral-B iO9 and iPMTC toothbrushes in a controlled trial involving ten participants. PIT achieved an average plaque coverage reduction to 5.6% within two minutes, an 84.5% improvement—substantially outperforming the Oral-B iO9 (12.4%) and iPMTC (13.2%). Its deep neural model, deployed directly on a smartphone, maintained high speed and precision, with a latency of just 29 ms and an Intersection over Union (IoU) of 75.22%.
User feedback was also encouraging: most participants rated PIT as comfortable, with strong daily use intent (average 3.9 ± 0.74), largely due to the smartphone-enabled plaque visualisation benefit (4.5 ± 0.85). Although convenience scores were slightly lower (3.4 ± 0.52) because of the plaque disclosing agent, overall satisfaction remained high, marking a potential leap forward in user-centred oral care.
Future Prospects for Smartphone-Enabled Dental Care
The study team plans to further refine PIT’s design by introducing detachable bristle heads, haptic or auditory feedback, and wireless data transmission. As the integration between toothbrush hardware and smartphone deepens, smart brushing may become a standard element of preventive dentistry, offering users precise, data-supported insight into their oral hygiene with every session.
Reference
Chen K et al. PIT: a novel toothbrush providing real-time and robust plaque indication during brushing. Association for Computing Machinery. 2025;DOI:10.1145/3711875.3729124.