Your email address is safe with us. View our Privacy policy.
New X-ray analysis spots early cavities
R. Siva Kumar and colleagues at RMK Engineering College in Tamil Nadu, say dental caries, known colloquially as tooth decay or dental cavities, is an infectious disease that damages teeth, causes toothache, tooth loss, infection and, in severe cases, death.
Detecting caries in the early stages of development is difficult. But researchers have developed an X-ray image software that reveals the pixel intensities at different X-ray wavelengths, much like the histogram analysis of images by a high-specification digital camera.
Kumar said the newly developed software reveals the X-ray histogram and spectrum are very different depending on whether the teeth X-rayed are normal or exhibiting the early stages of decay. The researchers found that, in the X-ray histogram, the pixel intensities are concentrated in different ranges depending on degree of decay.
The scientists say their new technique could be very useful for dental clinicians and could be extended using neural networks to automatically identify the different stages of dental caries.
The research is reported in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
This news arrived on: 08/25/2008
Printer Friendly Version | Send this page to a friend | Post Comment
Rate This Story:
Great - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - Bad
Posted Comments:
Comment archive | Comment FAQ's
 |
 |
View Science & Technology ezine stories by date or visit the complete archive |
The ArcaMax Politics channel is one of 70 content categories offered by ArcaMax Publishing on this ... |
FIND JOBS
