A miniaturized ultrasound transducer for monitoring full-mouth oral health: a preliminary study

ABSTRACT Objective To customize a miniaturized ultrasound transducer to access full-mouth B-mode, color Doppler and spectral Doppler imaging for monitoring oral health. Methods A customized periodontal ultrasound transducer SS-19-128 (19 MHz, 128 channels) with 1.8 cm wide and 1 cm thick was developed and connected to a data acquisition (DAQ) system. B-mode, color Doppler, and spectral Doppler data could all be collected with SS-19-128. The imaging resolution and penetration capacity of SS-19-128 were characterized on phantoms. Five human subjects were recruited to demonstrate B-mode and Doppler imaging by SS-19-128. Gingival thickness was measured on 11 swine teeth by SS-19-128 for comparison to conventional transgingival probing via Bland-Altman analysis and Pearson correlation. Results The axial and lateral spatial resolution at 5.5 mm depth is 102.1 μm and 142.9 μm, respectively. The penetration depth in a tissue-mimicking phantom is over 30 mm. In vivo B-mode imaging of all 28 teeth was demonstrated on one human subject, and imaging of tooth #18 was accessed on five human subjects. Gingival thickness measurement compared with transgingival probing showed a bias of −0.015 mm and SD of 0.031 mm, and a r = 0.9235 (P<0.0001) correlation. In vivo color and spectral Doppler imaging of the supraperiosteal artery in human gingiva was performed to generate hemodynamic information. Conclusions The small size of SS-19-128 offers important advantages over existing technology—more specifically, whole-mouth scanning/charting reminiscent of radiography. This is nearly a two-fold increase in the number of teeth that can be assessed versus existing transducers.