Funding outcome

Straight teeth and healthy smiles are important to a child's well-being. Crowding and misalignment of teeth can cause patients to have difficulty to move the jaw, to chew, and to speak. Also the patients will easily have gum diseases. Correction of the teeth's misalignment requires treatment from a dental specialist, known as orthodontist. Harmful X- ray has been routinely used to assist the orthodontist to make decision about the treatment. The accumulated radiation dose due to repeated clinical visits can be significantly high and might damage the growing organs. This proposal suggests studying the dental tissues (e.g. tooth, gum and underneath bone) using the ionizing radiation-free ultrasound. Besides, a smart computer program will be developed to assist the oral clinicians to identify the major dental structures and landmarks in the ultrasound images, and to perform automated measurements of the bone crest and landmark as well as gum thickness. If successful, the orthodontic patients will stand to benefit from the decreased harmful radiation and reduced cancer rate.