Dental Bioinformatics – Current Scope and Future perspectives

Endeavors in bioinformatics and their link to oral biology has revolutionized the way we understand oral diseases. The power of computing and analysis applied to clinical data has remarkably improved the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of clinicians by large. In this direction, this paper addresses key regions of bioinformatics and their scope in dentistry. Microarrays are used in diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic purposes. The scope of neural network analysis is presented. The power of computer aided image analysis for images from various medical imaging techniques are discussed. Various modalities by which genomics, proteomics and metabolomics revolutionize dentistry and lacuna in their practical realization projected. Finally, the goal of clinical medicine, the personalized clinical care is highlighted on its link to bioinformatics.