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

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 e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of biomedical engineering 2016-10, Vol.44 (10), p.2874-2886
Main Authors: Nguyen, Kim-Cuong T., Le, Lawrence H., Kaipatur, Neelambar R., Zheng, Rui, Lou, Edmond H., Major, Paul W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Arrays
Biochemistry
Biological and Medical Physics
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Biomedicine
Biophysics
Cements
Classical Mechanics
Computed tomography
Imaging
Incisor - diagnostic imaging
Ionizing radiation
Mandible - diagnostic imaging
Periodontium - diagnostic imaging
Phased arrays
Swine
Transducers
Travel time
Ultrasonic testing
Ultrasonography - methods
Ultrasound
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0090-6964
1573-9686
DOI:10.1007/s10439-016-1634-2