Early caries detection using optical coherence tomography: a review of the literature

Young-Seok Park; Byeong-Hoon Cho; Seung-Pyo Lee; Won-Jun Shon

doi:10.5395/JKACD.2011.36.5.367

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Park, Cho, Lee, and Shon: Early caries detection using optical coherence tomography: a review of the literature

Review Article

J Korean Acad Conserv Dent 2011;36(5):367-376.

Published online: 14 September 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5395/JKACD.2011.36.5.367

Early caries detection using optical coherence tomography: a review of the literature

Young-Seok Park, DDS, MSD, PhD¹, Byeong-Hoon Cho, DDS, MSD, PhD², Seung-Pyo Lee, DDS, MSD, PhD¹, Won-Jun Shon, DDS, MSD, PhD^2,^*

Assistant Professor

Professor

Associate Professor

¹Department of Oral Anatomy, Seoul National University School of Dentistry and Dental Research Institute, Seoul, Korea

²Department of Conservative Dentistry, Seoul National University School of Dentistry and Dental Research Institute, Seoul, Korea

^*Correspondence to Won-Jun Shon, DDS, MSD, PhD., Associate Professor, Department of Conservative Dentistry, Seoul National University School of Dentistry and Dental Research Institute, 28, Yeongeon-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea 110-768, TEL, +82-2-2072-3514; FAX, +82-2-2072-3859; E-mail, endoson@snu.ac.kr

Received 17 July 2011 Revised 19 August 2011 Accepted 21 August 2011

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Early detection of carious lesions increases the possibility of treatment without the need for surgical intervention. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an emerging three-dimensional imaging technique that has been successfully used in other medical fields, such as ophthalmology for optical biopsy, and is a prospective candidate for early caries detection. The technique is based on low coherence interferometry and is advantageous in that it is non-invasive, does not use ionizing radiation, and can render three-dimensional images. A brief history of the development of this technique and its principles are discussed in this paper. There have been numerous studies on caries detection, which were mostly in vitro or ex vivo experiments. Through these studies, the feasibility of OCT for caries detection was confirmed. However, further research should be performed, including in vivo studies of OCT applications, in order to prove the clinical usefulness of this technique. In addition, some technological problems must be resolved in the near future to allow for the use of OCT in everyday practice.

Keywords: Dental caries, Diagnosis, Optical coherence tomography (OCT)

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Figure 1.

The general scheme of an interferometric OCT setup. The linear polarizer and the polarizing beam splitter in parenthesis are equipped in PS-OCT. OCT, optical coherence tomography; PS-OCT, polarization-sensitive OCT. This illustration was partly modified with permission from the original one of Wojkowski¹² by courtesy of Optical Society.

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