A Complete Review on Dental Carious Lesion Detection Methods and its Challenges

Abstract

Dental caries is a common bacterial oral disease of teeth. Our mouth gets unhygienic due to the presence of carbohydrates, acid and bacteria. These destroy the enamel, dentine layer of the tooth. Streptococcus mutants are responsible for dental caries. As per World Health Organization report worldwide, 60-90% of school children and almost 100% of adults have dental caries. Dental caries and periodontal disease for long days without treatment causes tooth losses. Near future it will be an epidemic. It is a chronic disease that can affect us at any period of age. Recent research has indicated that there are possible links between oral infections and diabetes, heart, lung disease, stroke, and premature births. Hence early detection of dental caries in enamel would be very essential.Dentists generally use radiographs to detect dental caries. Frequently taken x-ray is harmful to human body. Unfortunately there is not a single method to detect caries in its early stage. Therefore, the purpose of this review paper is to identify the existing caries detection methods and find out its loopholes. Dental caries is most common oral infectious disease. It is painful and caused by Streptococcus mutants, acid and carbohydrates [1]. If dental caries remain untreated then it affects the root of the teeth and finally uprooted the teeth. Hence, if caries detected at its early stage then surgical interventions could be avoided. World Health organization (WHO) report reveals that 98% adult people and (60-90)% [2] of school children are suffering from dental caries.It is an infectious and chronic disease that can affect us at any age.Near future it will be an epidemic. Hence early caries detection is very essential. The reason behind dental caries is unhealthy oral condition and negligence of teeth caring like brushing at least twice in a day, wash full mouth after smoking etc. There are some general symptoms of dental caries like tooth pain, sensitivity due to hot 26. Dove SB. "Radiographic diagnosis of dental caries".

Overall Review on Recent Applications of Raman Spectroscopy Technique in Dentistry

“…Caries represents a serious health problem, which can vary from the subsurface enamel layer demineralization to an extensive deeper dentinal layer involvement at a clinical level. According to the International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS), which is a clinical scoring system developed for clinical research, clinical practice and other epidemiological matters, the detection codes for the assessment of caries activity vary within the following range: 0-Sound; 1-1st visual change in enamel; 2-distinct visual change in enamel; 3-localized enamel breakdown (fissure); 4-underlying dark shadow from dentin; 5-distinct cavity with visible dentin; and 6-extensive distinct cavity with visible dentin [30].…”

“…Early recognition and detection of the carious lesions and caries disease process is highly important from the point of view of medical intervention, to avoid progression into deeper parts of enamel (before cavitation) and healed by remineralization by applying a dental treatment with fluorinated products. Therefore, a correct and precise diagnosis of the carious lesion is of extreme importance in daily dental practice, which is increasingly focused on performing evidence-based, noninvasive, and painless modalities, or minimally invasive intervention treatments, aiming to reduce the removal of dental tissues whenever possible, as well as to promote and maintain the overall dental health [30,31].…”

“…Conventional clinical diagnostic methods that are frequently used for detecting cavitated lesions are characterized by insufficient sensitivity and specificity for the early detection of carious lesions [3]. For instance, bitewing radiographs are still considered the gold standard for the diagnosis of interproximal caries [30,31]. Dental radiographs are also useful in detecting larger, advanced dental caries, but limited image resolution and poor radiographic contrast of early carious lesions confer to radiographs reduced sensitivity for detecting early-stage dental caries [11][12][13].…”

“…This technique was found to be quite sensitive in detecting carious lesions and cavities that are deeply advanced into dentin, however not too efficient in detecting non-cavitated fissure caries. Evidence suggested higher specificity (0.59-0.90) than sensitivity (0.14-0.38) for the detection of non-cavitated fissure caries, which means that a false-negative diagnosis is highly probably to occur [3,[30][31][32][33].…”

Au-TiO2-Coated Spectroscopy-Based Human Teeth Disorder Detection Sensor: Design and Quantitative Analysis

“…There are some existing methods to detect diseases in human teeth, such as diagnodent, fiber optic transillumination (FOTI), electrical caries-monitor (ECM), quantitative light induced fluorescence (QLF), digital imaging fiber-optic transillumination (DIFOTI), digital radiographs, and so on [ 4 ]. These detection methods have some disadvantages such as tissue width, temperature, and hydration.…”