Dental News - New microsensor for pH mapping joins the fight against dental caries

Dental Tribune International

Fri. 20. July 2018

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TOKYO, Japan: Dental caries is a major health problem affecting the quality of life of many people worldwide. Products released by bacteria on the surface of teeth are known to be one of its major causes, but there has been difficulty in diagnosing the disease at an early stage. Recently, researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have developed a microsensor that can determine the pH on tooth surfaces with high accuracy. The pH level is used to distinguish between active and arrested caries.

The sensor is based on iridium oxide and has a diameter of only 300 μm. This means that the device can be used to analyse small specific patches of tooth surfaces where localised caries may have become established. The small dimensions of the sensor allow its use to analyse cavities or closely opposing surfaces of teeth, sites where conventional visual examinations cannot be performed.

By making use of this method, there is no need for subjective judgements by dentists or subjecting patients to investigative methods involving X-rays or other harmful procedures. In addition, the device provides accurate and quantitative findings on the vulnerability of caries, according to the TMDU researchers.

The team also found that the results obtained with the new sensor matched well with the findings of visual inspection by a dentist, suggesting that this approach is robust and reliable. It can avoid any subjectivity associated with conventional visual analysis by providing an objective, quantitative screening tool, the researchers said.

Senior author Prof. Yuji Miyahara at TMDU’s Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering said, “After creating this sensor and testing its accuracy on standard pH solutions, we analysed it using 18 extracted human teeth with different levels of caries. It could identify significant differences in pH levels among sites known to have active caries, sites with arrested caries, and healthy unaffected roots.”

Co-author Dr Miyuki Tabata, assistant professor at the institute, added that this new tool should help dentists identify caries at an earlier stage in order to provide “better and less invasive treatments”. She concluded: “It also helps us to distinguish between cases of active caries and cases of arrested caries in which remineralisation has started to occur, for which different treatments would be applied.”

The study, titled “PH mapping on tooth surfaces for quantitative caries diagnosis using micro Ir/IrOx pH sensor”, was published in April 2018 in Analytical Chemistry.

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