Assessment of residual adhesive on the dental surface using optical coherence tomography

Residual adhesive on tooth surface after bracket removal has to be identified at an advanced stage to avoid further effects on orthodontic and dental procedures, which has to be identified at an advanced stage. Since conventional visual inspection has a major limitation in identifying residuals, non-invasive identification with multi-dimensional assessments using swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) is proposed for the precise identification of residual adhesive on the tooth surface during dental bracket replacements. The feasibility was examined using ex-vivo bovine teeth specimens after the removal of orthodontic implant from the tooth surface. Multi-dimensional assessments, such as residual adhesive boundary, color-scaled enface, adhesive area and thickness information were obtained using OCT to confirm the feasibility of the method. The detection algorithm finds the boundary which is between the dental surface and residual adhesive. The residual adhesive is separated based on the boundary. The area of residual adhesive is measured by an optical microscope and the detection algorithm. The difference between the optical microscope and detection algorithm measured area is lower than 10 %. The results revealed that the performed OCT assessments can be beneficial for real-time application during orthodontic procedures as a primary inspection tool. Multi-dimensional assessment method used OCT and confirmed feasibility study shows that OCT can be used the detailed novel diagnosis system and effective tools for dental.