High frequency dental imaging and in-vitro monitoring of acid dental erosion

Acid erosion is the irreversible loss of dental material through dissolution of the enamel in acidic environments. Accurate and reliable measurements are hard to come by due to the lack of a stable reference point in the tooth and as such there is no diagnostic device available for the early detection and quantification of dental erosion. Ultrasound has previously been demonstrated as a non-invasive tool for measuring the thickness of enamel, with resolution being the main limit in the technique. In this study, b-mode images of a tooth undergoing acid erosion are continuously recorded using a custom, unfocused, single element Lithium Niobate transducer operating at a centre frequency of 90 MHz in pulse-echo mode. Using the enamel-dentine junction as a stable internal reference point, the rate of erosion is found to be 1.42±0.34 um/min in close agreement with published studies of material loss through acid erosion.