Abstract
BackgroundMeasurement of tooth enamel mineralization using a clinically viable method is essential since variation of mineralization may be used to monitor caries risk or in assessing the effectiveness of remineralization therapy. Fiber optic Raman systems are becoming more affordable and popular in context of biomedical applications. However, the applicability of fiber optic Raman systems for measurement of mineral content within enamel tissue has not been elucidated significantly in the prior literature.Material and MethodsHuman teeth with varying degrees of enamel mineralization were selected. In addition alligator, boar and buffalo teeth which have increasing amount of mineral content, respectively, were also included as another set of samples. Reference Raman measurements of mineralization were performed using a high-fidelity confocal Raman microscope.ResultsAnalysis of human teeth by research grade Raman system indicated a 2-fold difference in the Raman intensities of v1 symmetric-stretch bands of mineral-related phosphate bonds and 7-fold increase in mineral related Raman intensities of animal teeth. However, fiber optic system failed to resolve the differences in the mineralization of human teeth.ConclusionsThese results indicate that the sampling volume of fiber optic systems extends to the underlying dentin and that confocal aperture modification is essential to limit the sampling volume to within the enamel. Further research efforts will focus on putting together portable Raman systems integrated with confocal fiber probe. Key words:Enamel, mineral content, raman spectroscopy.
Highlights
Dental enamel is 95% mineral and 1% organic component and 4-5% water by weight percentage [1,2,3,4,5]
Enamel mineralization levels have varied substantially between animal teeth (Fig. 2) when it was evaluated with dard in the literature of mineralized tissues for mineralization assessment [22,24,25]
It has been suggested that the lower mineral concentration may be translated into increased porosity and is the research grade Horiba Jobin-Yvon confocal microscope
Summary
Dental enamel is 95% mineral and 1% organic component and 4-5% water by weight percentage [1,2,3,4,5]. An understanding of tooth enamel mineralization using a clinically viable method is essential since variations in mineralization may serve as an early predictor of a dental health, and may indicate high populational susceptibility to caries. Raman spectroscopy is one of the few methods which offers the opportunity to study enamel mineralization non-destructively in vivo [21,22].
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