New diagnostic methods are needed for the accurate assessment of caries lesion activity to establish the need for surgical treatment. Detection of the highly mineralized surface layer that forms near the surface of the lesions as a result of remineralization is important for diagnosis of the lesion activity. Previous studies have demonstrated that novel imaging methods can be used to detect remineralization of artificial enamel caries lesions. In this paper, the activity of natural enamel caries lesions was assessed in-vitro via detection of the surface layer with polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) and dehydration rate measurements with NIR reflectance and thermal imaging modalities. An automated approach for detecting the surface layer with PS-OCT yielded high sensitivity (=0.79) and high specificity (=0.93) with moderate correlation (R 2 = 0.5920) with histology. Significant differences in dehydration rate measurements were found between the active and the arrested lesions using both the NIR reflectance and thermal imaging modalities. These results demonstrate that these novel imaging methods are ideally suited for nondestructive, noninvasive, and quantitative measurement of lesion activity during a single clinical examination in real time.

中文翻译：

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评估天然牙釉质龋损活性的红外方法


需要新的诊断方法来准确评估龋齿病变活动以确定是否需要手术治疗。检测由于再矿化而在病变表面附近形成的高度矿化的表面层对于诊断病变活动非常重要。先前的研究表明，新颖的成像方法可用于检测人工牙釉质龋齿病变的再矿化。在本文中，通过使用偏振敏感光学相干断层扫描（PS-OCT）检测表面层以及使用近红外反射率和热成像模式测量脱水率来体外评估天然牙釉质龋齿病变的活性。使用 PS-OCT 检测表面层的自动化方法具有高灵敏度 (=0.79) 和高特异性 (=0.93)，与组织学具有中等相关性 (R 2 = 0.5920)。使用近红外反射率和热成像模式，发现活动病灶和停止病灶之间的脱水率测量存在显着差异。这些结果表明，这些新颖的成像方法非常适合在单次临床检查期间实时对病变活动进行非破坏性、非侵入性和定量测量。