FIBER OPTIC RAMAN IMAGER FOR VISUALIZING DENTAL CARIES

摘要 龋病是口腔健康领域最突出的问题。及早发现龋齿是非常必要的 因为腐烂可以通过再矿化来逆转。当稍后发现时，龋齿会导致昂贵的治疗，如 作为填充物、桥接物、牙冠或牙科植入物，每颗牙齿总计数千美元。因此，可靠的 在早期发病时诊断衰变将通过抑制疾病的进展而产生重大影响 在牙齿腐烂的晚期之前，并反过来减轻相关的牙齿护理费用。因为很早 对于目前的技术来说，发病的皮损是难以捉摸的，因此非常重视开发新的技术来早期 龋齿的诊断。拉曼成像很有前途，但需要降低成本，并为牙科定制 可操作性的。拉曼可以通过可视化腐烂牙釉质矿化的变化来检测龋齿。速度 现有的拉曼模式(逐点扫描等)不允许对口腔空间进行系统调查，以及 拉曼显微镜太笨重和复杂，不能在牙科手术中使用。一种光纤拉曼- 成像工具对于拉曼光谱的临床应用是必不可少的。拟议的试验性研究的主要目的 是为了开发一种用于早期检测龋齿的拉曼成像设备。目标一号将整合一只手- 手持用于牙科诊断的光纤拉曼成像仪。这款相机是一个便携的自动化平台 这是基于微阵列的广域激励和2D信号采集光学的创新组合，以 生成牙齿的咬合、前部和后部的矿化分布。系统将 在5分钟内生成牙齿表面发现口腔内大小至少为100微米的病变的全场图像。 目标2将验证和改进成像仪在检测龋齿方面的性能。这个 将评估系统的检测限度(病变大小和矿化程度)，并 通过人工诱导的大小和严重程度可控的损伤来改善。然后，成像器将被盲目测试 健康的牙齿样本和有自然龋损的样本以确定其敏感性和特异性 与未脱钙组织学的黄金标准相反。

Summary Dental caries is the most significant problem in oral health area. Early detection of caries is highly desired because decays can be reversed by remineralization. When detected later, caries result in costly treatments such as fillings, bridge, crown or dental implants, amounting to thousands of dollars per tooth. Therefore, the reliable diagnosis of decay at the early onset would have a significant impact by curbing the progression of the disease before the advanced stage of tooth decay and, in turn, alleviate the associated dental-care costs. Because early onset lesions are elusive to current technologies, there is great emphasis on developing new technologies for early diagnosis of caries. Raman imaging is promising but it needs to be lower cost and customized for the dental operatory. Raman can detect caries by visualizing changes in the mineralization of decaying enamel. The speed of existing Raman modalities (point by point scan etc.) does not allow a systematic survey of the oral space, and the Raman microscopes are too bulky and complex to be used in the dental operatory. A fiber optic Raman- imaging tool is essential to enable clinical utilization of Raman. The major aim of the proposed pilot study is to develop a Raman imaging device for early detection of caries. Aim 1 will integrate a hand- held fiber optic Raman imager for dental diagnostics. This imager is a portable and automated platform that is an innovative combination of microarray based wide-field excitation and 2D- signal collection optics to generate mineralization distributions of the occlusal, frontal and posterior aspects of the teeth. The system will generate full-field images of teeth surface finding lesions as least 100 µm size in the oral space within 5 minutes. Aim 2 will validate and refine the performance of the imager towards the detection of caries. The limits of detection (size of the lesion and the degree of mineralization) of the system will be assessed and improved by artificially induced lesions of controlled size and severity. The imager will then be tested blindly on sound teeth samples and those with naturally occurring caries lesions to determine its sensitivity and specificity against the gold standard undemineralized histology.