Fabrication and evaluation of dental endoscopic instruments using fiber-optic system

The entrance of a tooth root canal is very small to the naked eye, and in most cases, dentists operate blindly to perform the treatment using an instrument. Particularly, the observation of fractures near the root apex and collaterals of root canals is difficult even using the latest dental instrument. To solve these problems, we attempted to develop a novel dental endoscope. In this study, we developed micro image sensors that can be used for observation of root canals and evaluation of the image sensor visibility. Previous methods have only single line visibility; however, the new method enables evaluation of the sectional visibility in the screen area. Compared with commercially available image sensors, the new image sensor has more than two times higher sectional visibility. Hence, the most focusing area can be analyzed and the aforementioned problems can be solved to improve image sensors. Moreover, not only the micro image sensors but also other sensors can be evaluated quantitatively using this new method.