Assessment of a new infrared laser transillumination technology (808 nm) for the detection of occlusal caries—an in vitro study

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate in vitro performance of near-infrared laser transillumination (NIR-LTI) for detecting early occlusal caries in permanent teeth and compare it with quantitative light-induced fluorescence (QLF), DIAGNOdent Pen (DDPen), and conventional radiography (CR). Ninety-four occlusal surfaces presenting International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS) scores ranging from 0 to 3 were selected. For the NIR-LTI examination, images were captured using a prototype, which consists of a laser beam (808 nm) and an infrared CCD camera. One occlusal site on each tooth was assessed twice by two examiners. The teeth were prepared histologically and assessed for the presence of early caries. The intraexaminer correlation showed no difference between the NIR-LTI, DDPen, and QLF analytical methods, but all these methods differed from CR. Interexaminer reproducibility was moderate for NIR-LTI, which showed sensitivity (0.68), specificity (0.85), accuracy (0.73), and area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve (0.76) similar to those of the fluorescence method and different from those of the CR. In conclusion, the performance of NIR-LTI was comparable to that of DDPen and QLF and may therefore be considered a valid and reliable alternative for the diagnosis of incipient lesions on the occlusal surface of permanent teeth.

Use of DIAGNOdent and VistaProof in diagnostic of Pre-Cavitated Caries Lesions—A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Of the 27 articles included, 23 used DIAGNOdent [3,4,, studying sensitivity, specificity and AUC in vitro in 16 of them [4,[7][8][9][10][11][13][14][15][16][17]20,[23][24][25][26] while nine were in vivo [3,12,16,18,19,21,22,26,27]; in two cases, however, (Theocharopoulou 2015 [21] and Peycheva 2016 [24]) carried out the study in vivo and in vitro. For VistaProof, 14 articles were reviewed [4,5,7,8,10,12,14,15,19,23,[27][28][29][30], of which 10 were in vitro [4,7,8,10,14,15,23,…”

Diagnostic Validity of Digital Imaging Fiber-Optic Transillumination (DIFOTI) and Near-Infrared Light Transillumination (NILT) for Caries in Dentine

“…It was believed that this variation in longitude of wavelength of light would have a promising effect in terms of the detection of early-stage carious lesions, as it had been shown that light with the said characteristics disperses itself less and hence is able to penetrate more deeply in dental tissue, thereby enabling a better transmission of light, offering hence a considerable benefit [6][7][8]. This method entails, according to the absorption and dispersion of light, a good contrast between carious areas and those healthy areas surrounding the lesion, facilitating detection.…”

Application of Laser Irradiation for Restorative Treatments

“…The reliability of DIAGNO dent, in detecting secondary caries under composite restorations, is reported to be similar to digital radiographs [17], however, the Cone beam computed tomography seemed to represent the best accuracy [18]. Near-infrared laser transillumination (NIR-LTI) is another new generation of caries detectors which have shown promising results compared to DIAGNOdent however the researches are not vast enough to make a determined conclusion [19]. …”