Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

Dental caries remains the most prevalent chronic disease in both children and adults, imposing significant financial and societal burdens on families, governments, and health care systems. Among 5-17 year olds, tooth decay is more common than asthma, hay fever or chronic bronchitis and is responsible for large numbers of days missed from school and work. By age 19, 68 percent of youth have experienced tooth decay in permanent teeth. Similar trends are observed in adults (92% of adults 20 to 64 have had dental caries in their permanent teeth). The prevalence of caries suggests that the disease is not being effectively managed in the current standard of care in Dentistry due to insensitivity of clinical detection tools and techniques to early caries. The proposed project aims to develop a high resolution clinical device for detection and 3-D mapping of early dental caries using lasers and infrared cameras. The proposed device is expected to reveal dental demineralization at very early stages when the lesion can still be remineralized or healed, creating a painless, cost-effective and non-invasive treatment for tooth decay instead of the conventional drilling and filling approach. The outcome of this research will be widely useful not only as an early dental caries diagnostic imaging technology for Canadians, but also universally to dental researchers for carrying out a broad spectrum of research themes in Dentistry. Early dental caries detection advantages include: increased chance of successful remineralization, decreased risk of cavities and reduced treatment costs.