Region of interest segmentation on computed tomography taken before administration of medication. Credit: Oral Diseases (2026). DOI: 10.1111/odi.70386
CT images taken before patients begin treatment with bone resorption inhibitors may contain measurable clues about who will later develop medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (MRONJ), according to a retrospective study by a researcher at Hiroshima University.
Masaru Konishi, a lecturer at Hiroshima University Hospital and sole author of the study published in Oral Diseases, used radiomics, which turns subtle patterns such as shape, texture and intensity in medical images into measurable data, to analyze the mandibular region in pretreatment CT scans.
When these measurements were combined with machine learning, the models distinguished patients who later developed MRONJ from those who remained unaffected. Analyses that included both the jaw's porous, honeycomb-like cancellous bone and its denser, stronger cortical bone generally produced better predictive results than analyses limited to cancellous bone alone.
The stakes of early detection
