Infrared Methods for Assessment of the Activity of Natural Enamel Caries Lesions
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: New diagnostic methods are needed for the accurate assessment of caries lesion activity to establish the need for surgical treatment. Detection of the highly mineralized surface layer that forms near the surface of the lesions as a result of remineralization is important for diagnosis of the lesion activity. Previous studies have demonstrated that novel imaging methods can be used to detect remineralization of artificial enamel caries lesions. In this paper, the activity of natural enamel caries lesions was assessed in-vitro via detection of the surface layer with polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) and dehydration rate measurements with NIR reflectance and thermal imaging modalities. An automated approach for detecting the surface layer with PS-OCT yielded high sensitivity (=0.79) and high specificity (=0.93) with moderate correlation (R2= 0.5920) with histology. Significant differences in dehydration rate measurements were found between the active and the arrested lesions using both the NIR reflectance and thermal imaging modalities. These results demonstrate that these novel imaging methods are ideally suited for nondestructive, noninvasive, and quantitative measurement of lesion activity during a single clinical examination in real time.
Authors: Robert C. Lee, Michal Staninec, Oanh Le, Daniel Fried
Institution: University of California, San Francisco
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2321872415