RT2C: Predicting Time to New Dental Caries Using a Recurrent Neural Network Model Trained on Multi-Site Longitudinal Structured Dental Data

Dental caries remains one of the most prevalent chronic conditions globally, yet efforts to quantify a patients risk of developing new caries over time remain limited. Existing caries risk assessment (CRA) tools are widely used in clinical settings but typically rely on cross-sectional data, which may limit their predictive accuracy and generalizability across populations. To address these limitations, we developed RT2C, a recurrent neural network model based on bidirectional gated recurrent units (Bi-GRU) to predict time to new caries. The model was trained on longitudinal dental records from 466,782 patients across four diverse dental organizations, encompassing over one million visits between 2019 and 2023. Input features included demographics, preventive procedures, caries history, and previously recorded CRA scores. We benchmarked the model performance against other machine learning models such as logistic regression, light gradient boost machine, random survival forest, and CRA-based baselines using AUROC for binary classification and concordance index (c-index) for survival prediction. Our model demonstrated strong predictive performance, achieving a c-index of 88.52% (95% CI: 88.51-88.54) in survival analysis, significantly outperforming baseline models based on current or past CRA scores by more than 18%. Site-level evaluations confirmed its robust generalizability, with pooled models performing comparably or better than sites-pecific ones. Additionally, decision curve analysis showed that the Bi-GRU model offers greater clinical net benefit across a range of decision thresholds when compared to CRA or treat-all/treat-none strategies. By leveraging longitudinal dental histories and temporal patterns in patient visits, our proposed model provides clinically meaningful improvements in predicting caries risk. These findings support its potential integration into decision support tools for more personalized and preventive dental care.