Spectroscopic Detection of Caries Lesions

Background . A caries lesion causes changes in the optical properties of the affected tissue. Currently a caries lesion can be detected only at a relatively late stage of development. Caries diagnosis also suffers from high interobserver variance. Methods . This is a pilot study to test the suitability of an optical diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for caries diagnosis. Reflectance visible/near-infrared spectroscopy (VIS/NIRS) was used to measure caries lesions and healthy enamel on extracted human teeth. The results were analysed with a computational algorithm in order to find a rule-based classification method to detect caries lesions. Results . The classification indicated that the measured points of enamel could be assigned to one of three classes: healthy enamel, a caries lesion, and stained healthy enamel. The features that enabled this were consistent with theory. Conclusions . It seems that spectroscopic measurements can help to reduce false positives at in vitro setting. However, further research is required to evaluate the strength of the evidence for the method's performance.