Paper
27 April 2001 Optical pathlengths in dental caries lesions
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
The average pathlength of light inside dental enamel and incipient lesions is measured and compared, in order to quantitatively confirm the prediction that incipient lesions have higher scattering coefficients that sound enamel. The technique used, called optical pathlength spectroscopy provides experimental access to the pathlength distribution of light inside highly scattering samples. This is desirable for complex biological materials, where current theoretical models are very difficult to apply. To minimize the effects of surface reflections the average pathlength is measured in wet sound enamel and white spots. We obtain values of 367 micrometers and 272 micrometers average pathlength for sound enamel and white spots respectively. We also investigate the differences between open and subsurface lesions, by measuring the change in the pathlength distribution of light as they go from dry to wet.
© (2001) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Claudia Mujat, Jaap J. ten Bosch, and Aristide C. Dogariu "Optical pathlengths in dental caries lesions", Proc. SPIE 4249, Lasers in Dentistry VII, (27 April 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.424500
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Cited by 1 scholarly publication.
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KEYWORDS
Teeth

Scattering

Light scattering

Reflectivity

Dental caries

Reflection

Luminescence

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