In vivo imaging in the oral cavity by endoscopic optical coherence tomography

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

The common way to diagnose hard and soft tissue irregularities in the oral cavity is initially the visual inspection by an experienced dentist followed by further medical examinations, such as radiological imaging and/or histopathological investigation. For the diagnosis of oral hard and soft tissues, the detection of early transformations is mostly hampered by poor visual access, low specificity of the diagnosis techniques, and/or limited feasibility of frequent screenings. Therefore, optical noninvasive diagnosis of oral tissue is promising to improve the accuracy of oral screening. Considering this demand, a rigid handheld endoscopic scanner was developed for optical coherence tomography (OCT). The novelty is the usage of a commercially near-infrared endoscope with fitting optics in combination with an established spectral-domain OCT system of our workgroup. By reaching a high spatial resolution, in vivo images of anterior and especially posterior dental and mucosal tissues were obtained from the oral cavity of two volunteers. The convincing image quality of the endoscopic OCT device is particularly obvious for the imaging of different regions of the human soft palate with highly scattering fibrous layer and capillary network within the lamina propria.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number071207
JournalJournal of biomedical optics
Volume23
Issue number7
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2018
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 29500877
ORCID /0000-0002-8160-3000/work/142248346
ORCID /0000-0002-7267-7016/work/142249526
ORCID /0000-0003-0554-2178/work/142249823
ORCID /0000-0003-2292-5533/work/142256563

Keywords

Keywords

  • dentistry, endoscopic imaging, medical and biological imaging optics, medical optics instrumentation, optical coherence tomography, tissue

Library keywords