3D imaging of dental hard tissues with Fourier domain optical coherence tomography

A fiber optical coherence tomography (OCT) probe is used for three dimensional dental imaging. The probe has a lightweight miniaturized design with a size of a pen to facilitate clinic in vivo diagnostics. The probe is interfaced with a swept-source / Fourier domain optical coherence tomography at 20K axial scanning rate. The tooth samples were scanned from occlusal, buccal, lingual, mesial, and distal orientations. Three dimensional imaging covers tooth surface area up to 10 mm x 10 mm with a depth about 5 mm, where a majority of caries affection occurs. OCT image provides better resolution and contrast compared to gold standard dental radiography (X-ray). In particular, the technology is well suited for occlusal caries detection. This is complementary to X-ray as occlusal caries affection is difficult to be detected due to the X-ray projectile scan geometry. The 3D topology of occlusal surface as well as the dentin-enamel junction (DEJ) surface inside the tooth can be visualized. The lesion area appears with much stronger back scattering signal intensity.