Authors: Ahmed M Mahmoud Peter Ngan Richard Crout Osama M Mukdadi
Publish Date: 2010/06/08
Volume: 38, Issue: 11, Pages: 3409-3422
Abstract
Although medical specialties have recognized the importance of using ultrasonic imaging dentistry is only beginning to discover its benefit This has particularly been important in the field of periodontics which studies infections in the gum and bone tissues that surround the teeth This study investigates the feasibility of using a customdesigned highfrequency ultrasound imaging system to reconstruct highresolution 50 μm threedimensional 3D surface images of periodontal defects in human jawbone The system employs singleelement focused ultrasound transducers with center frequencies ranging from 30 to 60 MHz Continuous acquisition using a 1 GHz data acquisition card is synchronized with a highprecision twodimensional 2D positioning system of ±1 μm resolution for acquiring accurate measurements of the mandible in vitro Signal and image processing algorithms are applied to reconstruct highresolution ultrasound images and extract the jawbone surface in each frame Then all edges are combined and smoothed in order to render a 3D surface image of the jawbone In vitro experiments were performed to assess the system performance using mandibles with teeth dentate or without nondentate The system was able to reconstruct 3D images for the mandible’s outer surface with superior spatial resolution down to 24 μm and to perform the whole scanning in 30 s Major anatomical landmarks on the images were confirmed with the anatomical structures on the mandibles All the anatomical landmarks were detected and fully described as 3D images using this novel ultrasound imaging technique whereas the 2D Xray radiographic images suffered from poor contrast These results indicate the great potential of utilizing highresolution ultrasound as a noninvasive nonionizing imaging technique for the early diagnosis of the more severe form of periodontal disease
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