PS-OCT of natural pigmented and nonpigmented interproximal caries lesions

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography (PS-OCT) can be used to image early dental caries. The purpose of this study was to compare the measured reflectivity of natural caries lesions with the mineral loss measured using digital microradiography. An all polarization-maintaining fiber based PS-OCT system operating at 1310-nm was used to acquire polarization resolved images of natural white spot lesions and pigmented lesions on the smooth surfaces of extracted teeth. There was a strong positive correlation between the increase in the integrated reflectivity in the perpendicular polarization axis of the PS-OCT system and the increase in the integrated mineral loss or lesion severity for both white-spot and pigmented lesions, P <0.001. Therefore, PS-OCT is well-suited to assess the severity of natural caries lesions and resolve the internal structure of early caries lesions for the potential assessment of the lesion activity.