No abstract

Periodontitis affects nearly 50% of Americans. Conventional clinical assessment based on periodontal probing remains the gold standard despite being operator-dependent, time-consuming, and often painful. In contrast, ultrasound imaging is non-invasive, portable, low-cost, and free of ionizing radiation. Unfortunately, most conventional ultrasound transducers can only access anterior teeth due to the size of the imaging equipment. Here, we characterized a novel and customized periodontal ultrasound transducer SS-19-128 that can examine the entire human mouth. The transducer is 1.8 cm width by 1 cm height, including 128 channels with a center frequency of 19 MHz. The axial and lateral spatial resolution at 5.5 mm depth is 102.1 μm and 142.9 μm, respectively. The penetration depth in tissue mimicking phantom is over 31 mm. Imaging was performed on 3 human subjects, and statistical analysis on swine jaws indicated a high agreement with the gold standard.