You can see right into the tooth,” said Dr. Daniel Fried, professor, University of California, San Francisco School of Dentistry. “The enamel looks almost like an ice cube...Many lesions in the mouth have been re-mineralized and...no longer need intervention,” said Fried. “Dentists have trouble telling the difference between active and arrested lesions; this new technology has the potential of differentiating them.In Fried Illuminates the Future of Dentistry
OCT [already] has changed the practice of ophthalmology...It’s been very successful for retinal imaging...and it’s also very promising for dentistry...If the dentist doesn’t know if [a lesion] is active or arrested,” said Fried, “with OCT, you can actually see the lesion structure, how deep it is and if it has a definitive surface zone suggesting that remineralization has occurred.In Fried Illuminates the Future of Dentistry
Tooth enamel is almost completely transparent in the near-infrared. We showed that you could take an OCT image of a lesion and tell how severe it is. Previously the only option was to extract the tooth and cut it open for closer inspection. Dental decay isn't like cancer. You can actually treat it, arrest it and even reverse it. If you spot the lesions early enough, you can treat them with fluoride and re-mineralize them, and you can measure this with OCT. It gives the clinician a way of telling whether the chemical intervention is working.In Viewing Dentistry in a New Light