TAMIL NADU, India, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Scientists in India say they have developed an X-ray technique that can detect very early signs of dental caries.
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.
