In spite of the remarkable decline in the prevalence of Dental caries observed in the U.S. during the past 25 years, Dental caries continues to be the most common Dental disease and additional measures for the prevention and control of this disease are needed. The ability to detect Dental caries at an earlier stage of development would markedly facilitate the development of more effective measures for the prevention and control of this disease and their use in Dental practice. Conventional visual-tactile-radiographic procedures for caries detection are unable to detect the caries process until it has progressed through 300-500 microns of enamel and such lesions are difficult to reverse/remineralize with restorative procedures frequently required. Research during the past decade has demonstrated that a new technology, Quantitative Light Fluorescence (QLF) is not only capable of detecting the caries process much earlier but is able to quantify changes in the mineral content, i.e., demineralization and remineralization, as they occur in situ. This capability will allow Dental practitioners to: (a) identify early lesions reflecting caries risk prior to cavitation; (b) implement appropriate interventions to reverse the disease process at an earlier stage with more efficient outcomes; and, (3) monitor the success (or failure) of the applied intervention measures. Nevertheless, we believe that the presently available QLF instrumentation could be significantly improved to permit the detection of the caries process shortly after initiation through the development of a mathematical algorithm that utilizes all characteristics of the images. The effectiveness of these analyses would be greatly enhanced if there were more distinctive change between the appearance of sound and carious tissue. The purpose of this application is to develop and demonstrate a unique method for displaying these changes.
Thesaurus Terms: dental caries, dental disorder diagnosis, diagnosis quality /standard, early diagnosis, fluorescence spectrometry, image enhancement, mathematical model, method development dental visualization, tooth enamel bioimaging /biomedical imaging, human tissue, video microscopy
