Abstract

Dental Caries which has high prevalence rate, accounts for majority of dental diseases. Many treatment and preventive treatment has been developed, thereby reducing the prevalence rate, but in our country, fluoridization has not spread widely yet, so prevention has not been done satisfactorily. When dental caries progresses, irreversible damage of tooth structure occurs. In initial dental caries, demineralizing tooth structure can be remineralized, so restorative treatment is unnecessary. In this study, 20 teeth restored with composite resin without fluoride release were used and divided into two groups. Incipient dental caries were artificially made and demineralization procedure was done for 1 and 2 weeks, for each group. Changes in mineral contents around the margins were analysed with confocal laser scanning microscope. The results were as follow. 1. Both total fluorescence of the lesion and average fluorescence of the lesion of remineralized samples decreased compared to demineralizing state. (p＜0.01) 2. Confocal laser scanning microscopy can be used in quantitative analysis of mineral change. In result, confocal laser scanning microscopy can be used in quantitative analysis of mineral change and it could be used in many different fields of dentistry in the future.

Keywords

• Confocal laser scanning microscopy;
• Demineralization;
• Remineralization;
• Initial dental caries