# Dental Applications of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) in Cardiology
###### Abstract  
Across all medical disciplines, therapeutic interventions are based on previously acquired diagnostic information. In cardiology, which includes the detection and assessment of the disease \"caries\" and its lesions, as well as non-invasive to invasive treatment and caries prevention, visual inspection and radiology are routinely used as diagnostic tools. However, the specificity and sensitivity of these standard methods are still unsatisfactory and the detection of defects is often afflicted with a time delay. Numerous novel methods have been developed to improve the unsatisfactory diagnostic possibilities in this specialized medical field. These newer techniques have not yet found widespread acceptance in clinical practice, which might be explained by the generated numerical or color-coded output data that are not self-explanatory. With optical coherence tomography (OCT), an innovative image-based technique has become available that has considerable potential in supporting the routine assessment of teeth in the future. The received cross-sectional images are easy to interpret and can be processed. In recent years, numerous applications of OCT have been evaluated in cardiology beginning with the diagnosis of different defects up to restoration assessment and their monitoring, or the visualization of individual treatment steps. Based on selected examples, this overview outlines the possibilities and limitations of this technique in cardiology and restorative dentistry, which pertain to the most clinical relevant fields of dentistry. optical coherence tomography; cardiology; caries prevention; caries diagnosis; caries therapy; restoration assessment; process monitoring; in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo evaluation +
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Caries is still one of the main reasons for invasive restorative treatment [6]. Today, it is a primary objective in oral health care to preserve as much of the healthy tooth structure as possible. Therefore, early non- or minimally-invasive treatment options are becoming more important, thus placing higher demands on diagnostic tools as it is no longer sufficient to detect already extended carious lesions or cavitations. Rather, a goal is to recognize lesions, or other defects at their earliest possible stage, and to assess reproducibly whether they progress or not. Early lesion manifestations could be stabilized, or remineralization could even be initiated [7; 8; 9]. Traditional caries diagnostic methods like visual-tactile detection and radiography cannot achieve these objectives. X-ray diagnosis, in particular, has limitations and drawbacks: the exposure to ionizing radiation, the interpretation failures due to superpositioning effects, and a low sensitivity [10] that hinders the early detection and monitoring of minor pathological changes. Recently, innovative methods based on fluorescence [11], impedance spectroscopy, or digital infrared-transillumination have been implemented in caries diagnosis [12]. However, even these techniques were not able to solve the referred challenges and showed deficits in both sensitivity and specificity [1; 13]. Therefore, there is still a medical need for procedures which could display early caries lesions and their progression. Initial findings concerning OCT suggested that different expressions of lesions, starting with very early demineralizations, could be detected. A threshold independent assessment of the validity by ROC analysis is aimed for the future to clarify  
Figure 1: Conformance of visual assessment with optical coherence tomography. (**a**) Extracted human premolar with a carious lesion (L) of International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS II) Code 1. The lesion is visually detectable only after drying.