High-Resolution Ultrasonic Imaging of Dento-Periodontal Tissues Using a Multi-Element Phased Array System

Abstract

Intraoral ultrasonography uses high-frequency mechanical waves to study dento-periodontium. Besides the advantages of portability and cost-effectiveness, ultrasound technique has no ionizing radiation. Previous studies employed a single transducer or an array of transducer elements, and focused on enamel thickness and distance measurement. This study used a phased array system with a 128-element array transducer to image dento-periodontal tissues. We studied two porcine lower incisors from a 6-month-old piglet using 20-MHz ultrasound. The high-resolution ultrasonographs clearly showed the cross-sectional morphological images of the hard and soft tissues. The investigation used an integration of waveform analysis, travel-time calculation, and wavefield simulation to reveal the nature of the ultrasound data, which makes the study novel. With the assistance of time-distance radio-frequency records, we robustly justified the enamel-dentin interface, dentin-pulp interface, and the cemento-enamel junction. The alveolar crest level, the location of cemento-enamel junction, and the thickness of alveolar crest were measured from the images and compared favorably with those from the cone beam computed tomography with less than 10% difference. This preliminary and fundamental study has reinforced the conclusions from previous studies, that ultrasonography has great potential to become a non-invasive diagnostic imaging tool for quantitative assessment of periodontal structures and better delivery of oral care.

Periodontal evaluation using a non-invasive imaging method (ultrasonography)

“…Ultrasonography has great potential to become a noninvasive diagnostic imaging tool for quantitative assessment of the periodontal structures and better delivery of oral care. [19] Ultrasound has significant potential to aid surgeons in "visualizing" oral structures during minimally invasive surgery and guide local anesthesia for difficult cases [15] due to the fact that it is a real time imaging examination.…”

Ultrasonography for noninvasive and real‐time evaluation of peri‐implant tissue dimensions

“…An early study reported unfavourable results, suffering from low image resolution (Palou, McQuade, & Rossmann, ). In a contrasting manner, others (Chifor et al., ; Nguyen, Le, Kaipatur, & Major, ; Nguyen et al., ; Tsiolis, Needleman, & Griffiths, ) showed promising outcomes using higher frequency ultrasound that yield better image resolution. A recent proof‐of‐principle study (Chan, Wang, Fowlkes, Giannobile, & Kripfgans, ) showed that ultrasound can image important oral anatomical structures.…”

Anexvivocomparative study of occlusal and proximal caries using terahertz and X-ray imaging

“…Recent technological advances have supported the exploration of additional strategies for caries detection with a particular emphasis on diagnosis at an earlier stage of formation without using ionizing radiation. A previous study, 13 assessed the effectiveness and reliability of a high resolution ultrasonography device by comparing its findings with those of clinically available radiographic techniques. 13 Similarly, in order to assess the validity and effectiveness of the innovative technique presented here, we compared THz imaging with common radiological techniques such as; intraoral periapical images and CBCT images.…”

“…A previous study, 13 assessed the effectiveness and reliability of a high resolution ultrasonography device by comparing its findings with those of clinically available radiographic techniques. 13 Similarly, in order to assess the validity and effectiveness of the innovative technique presented here, we compared THz imaging with common radiological techniques such as; intraoral periapical images and CBCT images. The present study was designed to evaluate the imaging capacity of THz waves by using reflection measurements.…”