13th World Congress for Laser Dentistry

26-28, April 2012

Barcelona, Spain

Meeting Abstract

Sponsors: World Federation for Laser Dentistry

- Oral Presentation 4

TITLE: Modeling Carbon Loss in Laser Treated Dental Enamel.

AUTHORS: Lin M, Liu SB, Huang G, Jiang HH, Huang RZ, Xu F, Lu TJ.   

The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technolo-gy, Xi’an Jiaotong University

SOURCE:  Med Oral Patol Oral Cir Bucal. 2012 May 1;17(Supplement1):S4.

* doi:10.4317/medoral.17643503

http://dx.doi.org/10.4317/medoral.17643503

Abstract

Dental caries negatively affect numerous people throughout the world. Enamel mineral is a highly substituted form of hydroxyapatite (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2), referred to as carbonated hydroxyapatite. Laser irradiation of enamel causes a reduction in carbonate content resulting in reduced acid dissolution. Mathematical modeling of carbonate loss is of clinical interest as it acts as a tool for assessing thecariostatic effect after laser treatments. To accurately predict the carbonate loss, a coupled model was proposed based on the Fourier heat transfer model and Arrhenius equation. The predicted carbonate loss along the temperature gradient agreed well with existing experimental measurements. We demonstrated that the developed model is capable of assessing the modification depth of laser irradiated enamel by quantitatively correlating the laser parameters with carbonate loss along the temperature gradient. These results indicate that the proposed mo-del could enable better optimization of laser parameters for caries prevention.